Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 30 Sep 2003 14:53:24 +0100 | From | Dave Jones <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] Mutilated form of Andi Kleen's AMD prefetch errata patch |
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On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 02:39:36PM +0100, Jamie Lokier wrote: > Dave Jones wrote: > > This looks to be completely gratuitous. Why disable it when we have the > > ability to work around it ? > > Because some people expressed a wish to have kernels that don't > contain the workaround code, be they P4-optimised or 486-optimised > kernels.
And those people are wrong. If they want to save bloat, instead of 'fixing' things by removing <1 page of .text, how about working on some of the real problems like shrinking some of the growth of various data structures that actually *matter*.
The "I don't want Athlon code in my kernel because I run a P4 and it makes it slow/bigger" argument is totally bogus. It's akin to the gentoo-esque "I compiled my distro with -march=p4 and now my /bin/ls is faster than yours" argument.
> After all we have kernels that don't contain the F00F > workaround too. I'm not pushing this patch as is, it's for > considering the pros and cons.
F00F workaround was enabled on every kernel that is possible to boot on affected hardware last time I looked. This is what you seem to be missing, it's not optional. If its possible to boot that kernel on affected hardware, it needs errata workarounds.
> CONFIG_X86_PREFETCH_WORKAROUND makes more makes more sense with the > recently available "split every x86 CPU into individually selectable > options" patch, and, on reflection, that's probably where it belongs.
Said patch isn't included in mainline, so this argument is bogus. Relative merits of that patch were already discussed in another thread.
Dave
-- Dave Jones http://www.codemonkey.org.uk - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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