[desktop-discuss] Re: SuSE Enterprise Desktop 10 reviews

[Gerald Henriksen]

On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 05:56:22 PDT, you wrote:

>While I'm not a newbie at compiling kernel and stuff, my comment
>above was actually from a regular desktop user's perspective. Why
>is that *Solaris can't ship with release-kernel optimized for i686?
>I don't see either individuals or organizations running Solaris on older
>hardware, particulary when Solaris x86 is still called 'Slowaris' just about
>everywhere.
>
>It's not about minor optimizations here and there. It shows that Sun still
>doesn't pay much needed attention to the Solaris x86.

Nonsense, it shows a misunderstanding of what the processors offer and
how it affects things.

The only thing i686 offered over the previous line (i586, which is
what i386 is these days for any compiled software) is the cmov
instruction.

However as the following message shows utilizing cmov is actually a
negative on modern processors so i686 will actually be slower.
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2006-July/msg00160.html


Despite what some people believe compiling code for a particular
version of the x86 cpu line doesn't offer a noticable improvement.