Cc: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@...>, Arjan van de Ven <arjan@...>, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...>, x86 maintainers <x86@...>, Andrew Morton <akpm@...>, Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...>
yeah, in terms of precision of the definition it's certainly more
towards the 'vague' end of the spectrum. OTOH, we do change our defaults
slowly but surely to match the hardware. So this would give a practical
definition. If someone _does_ complain legitimately, it doesnt cost us
much to revert a tweak and delay it some more.
So the idea is to have some sort of independent platform, instead of the
current practice of distros like Debian chosing pretty much random
options. No strong opinion though. We can cover 90% of the real
advantages via dynamic methods, it's quite rare that we have to make
hard .config choices.
Pretty much the only hardcoded aspect that hurts in practice is the
cache alignment parameter - all the rest is either dynamic already or
insignificant. Ever since distros have discovered
CONFIG_CC_OPTIMIZE_FOR_SIZE=y, even the various compiler optimization
parameters have less of a role. We just have to wait a year or two for
P4's to not matter that much anymore, then we can do generic kernels
with 64 byte alignment and cmov, that will just work almost everywhere
rather optimally.
Ingo
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