Recent Fedora Core kernels (plus my SPEC file for 2.6.8-1.541 with Athlon support)

[William M. Quarles]

Dave Jones wrote:

<snip>
>  > C. If it doesn't hurt and it would probably help, I don't see what's the 
>  > matter with making an Athlon-optimized kernel.
> 
> A number of reasons.
> - It's one more column in the matrix of supported kernels to worry about.
>   This may seem insignificant, but it takes quite a while to push
>   a kernel package through the buildsystem given how many variants
>   it spits out. On a busy day (like for eg, just before release), it
>   can take the better part of a day to get packages built.
> - The gain just isn't worth it over the 2.4 kernels.
>   Now that the runtime optimisations get performed in 2.6, theres only
>   one thing thats missing that would be in an Athlon optimised kernel,
>   and thats the optimised copy_page/clear_page, which are really only
>   a win when a lot of data is being copied back/forth between the kernel,
>   and even then, only under certain usage patterns.  I'll be surprised
>   if this shows up on any real-world application.
<snip>

Apparently the man who started this thread found his real-world 
applications.

----
Peace,
William