lunuxcaffe; logo contest - mystery font

Henry Spencer henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org
Wed Nov 10 17:44:35 UTC 2004


On Wed, 10 Nov 2004, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> An optimized kernel makes some sense, which is why kernels for different
> cpu types are provided.

As I understand it, the main significance there is not so much exploiting
the expanded instruction sets of the later CPUs, but exploiting features
like fancier memory mapping.  That is, the main issue is not compiler
options but kernel configuration options.

> It seems the key cpu optimizations are actually done with hand coded
> assemble, not with gcc cpu type optimizations which hardly make a
> difference.

Depends on what you're doing.  There *are* applications where having the
compiler exploit the post-386 instructions can make a real difference. 
For example, most any language where a "pointer" is a heavyweight entity
carrying extra data along will benefit -- perhaps heavily -- from faster
block-copy facilities on the modern CPUs. 

Those "key CPU optimizations" mostly are severely CPU-intensive operations
where the complex, irregular structure of the x86 CPUs makes it very
difficult for compilers to optimize as well as humans. 

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org

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