On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Jun Sun wrote: > Moving forward I see MIPS mainly used in embedded systems. I think need of > using the same kernel binary for multiple CPUs is rare, especially for the > "same" CPU with or without FPU. Therefore having run-time detection is a > waste of effort. Half-config-half-runtime solution is pretty messy too. Since the run-time detection is about three lines of code (and the resulting code consists of a similar number of CPU instructions) I consider it no effort at all. And remember not only hackers want to use Linux -- not everyone is going to recompile his own kernel, and the MIPS world is not limited to embedded devices -- there is quite a number of MIPS workstation and server systems out there. Neither crashing silently nor printing an obscure oops is not an option when no FP hw is available and we require it for one reason or another. I hope we will be able to build a generic MIPS kernel one day, just like we can do for Alpha -- it would encourage redundant code removal which in turn would improve cleanness and consistency. -- + Maciej W. Rozycki, Technical University of Gdansk, Poland + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + e-mail: macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl, PGP key available +
