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SubjectRe: [PATCH] Cyrix setup

On Sun, 8 Mar 1998, Phil Brutsche wrote:

> > Here we go for a new Cyrix patch.
> > Indeed, many Cyrix users use the K.Gadeyne's set6x86 program with a simple
> > rc script in order to enable several 6x86 features at bootup. So why not
> > just merging these initializations in the kernel ?
> Ah... sorry, but no. What would happen if someone would use some of
> those performace-enhancing options in the intitialization of the kernel?
> Either:
> a) They would work great and the kernel would be super fast
> or
> b) They wouldn't work at all and would completely mess things up (lock
> the machine, interfere with HD operation, I can't recall what the points
> where against doing this during the last discussion).
>
> Besides, what if someone wanted to CHANGE those options? They would have
> to re-compile their kernel every time. It's so much more convenient to
> have the initializations in a user-space program.

maybe a (non /proc :) filesystem (possibly demand-loadable as a module)
could provide all the flexibility, still it could do things like SMP-safe
setting of CPU features, cache flushes and other, 'best done in the
kernel' stuff. All the nice performance-things like MTRR's, cache settings
and pipeline stategies and other uses [like the Cyrix performance
features] could be accessed in a consistent way. It could thus serve as a
central collection of CPU-related low-level performance hacks?

one could do:

echo 1 > /cpu/cache/L2/writeback
echo 1 > /cpu/pipeline/fast_IO

some of /proc could be moved to /cpu. Wether all these CPU features can be
represented properly in human-readable form via a VFS interface, tough
question.

-- mingo


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