[Gllug] Are i386 & i586 rpm's interchangeable?

Bruce Richardson brichardson at lineone.net
Thu Aug 16 13:29:01 UTC 2001


On 8/16/01, 12:21:25 PM, Alain Williams <addw at phcomp.co.uk> wrote regarding 
Re: [Gllug] Are i386 & i586 rpm's interchangeable?:


> But: 586 has some instructions that if used can make an app go faster.
> So if you compile for the arcitecture that you have you can get better
> code.

> Some distros take the view that everyone has a pentium these days and so
> compile for that - but cut out people with very old h/ware.

Though the optimisation routes taken by more recent CPUs mean that they 
will often run 386 code faster than code optimised for i486 or i586.  Add 
to that the fact that gcc still doesn't do any aggressively CPU-oriented 
optimisation and producing i586 packages produce either no benefit or a 
negative impact on recent machines.

-- 

Bruce

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