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OpenSUSE Developers Continue Discussing x86_64 Microarchitecture Feature Levels

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  • #11
    So much slicing and dicing, trying to find the least evil, when better tooling would be a simple and straightforward fix. We could sit here all day arguing over where to draw the line in the sand, or just patch the package manager to read the CPU info and check some package tags.

    Then all the packages are compiled for v1 if you like, and anything performance sensitive ranging from the kernel to browsers to databases can be additionally compiled with v4 (or whatever combination) and selected where supported. Minimum compilation, no lost users, potential support for future package customizations.

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    • #12
      personally i'd vote for v3, but that is because by the time ALP arrives my entire PC estate will be Zen3 or newer.

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      • #13
        Originally posted by Developer12 View Post
        So much slicing and dicing, trying to find the least evil, when better tooling would be a simple and straightforward fix. We could sit here all day arguing over where to draw the line in the sand, or just patch the package manager to read the CPU info and check some package tags.
        What about just using glibc's HWCAPS? They were kinda made to solve this very problem.


        Originally posted by Developer12 View Post
        Then all the packages are compiled for v1 if you like, and anything performance sensitive ranging from the kernel to browsers to databases can be additionally compiled with v4 (or whatever combination) and selected where supported. Minimum compilation, no lost users, potential support for future package customizations.
        HWCAPS can do this, too. What people tend to miss is that HWCAPS can enable more aggressive adoption/support for v3 and even v4, without having to drag everyone else along.

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        • #14
          Originally posted by Jedibeeftrix View Post
          personally i'd vote for v3, but that is because by the time ALP arrives my entire PC estate will be Zen3 or newer.
          This is a valid point. ALP isn't coming out tomorrow, it won't be available until 2024 at the earliest. There are people in this thread recommending SSE3 as the baseline which will be at least TWENTY years old by the time ALP ships. Without hard data showing that a meaningful percentage of your user base will be impacted because they run Pentium / Celeron / Atom, it seems insane to hold your shiny new platform back that far.

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          • #15
            Originally posted by pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx View Post
            There are people in this thread recommending SSE3 as the baseline which will be at least TWENTY years old by the time ALP ships.
            No, CPUs supporting the full v2 instruction set weren't released until 2010. v2 is equivalent to -march=westmere.



            Originally posted by pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx View Post
            Without hard data showing that a meaningful percentage of your user base will be impacted because they run Pentium / Celeron / Atom, it seems insane to hold your shiny new platform back that far.
            You're looking at the wrong thing. Instead of looking at when the first CPU was released that supported v2 features, you need to look at when the last CPUs were released that don't support v3. And those are still shipping in new systems, as of today. Chromebooks, entry-level laptops, low-end NUCs, mini-PCs, and embedded.

            https://www.servethehome.com/new-int...ge-processors/

            Again, why not simply use glibc's HWCAPS? Nobody seems to answer this. It lets you make progress at a faster rate -- even enabling you to utilize v4 -- without having to leave people behind.
            Last edited by coder; 16 August 2022, 12:54 PM.

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            • #16
              According to ark.intel.com, both Jasper Lake and Elkhart lake actually launched in 2021:

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              • #17
                Originally posted by pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx View Post
                The feature level debates are just one of a million reasons that distros need some instrumentation to make better product decisions.
                While almost everyone agrees that guesses do not work well, whenever "instrumentation" (i.e. reporting home) is brought up you get into a mess of privacy issues, which no one has yet offered a way to both make things truly anonymous while not supporting ballot stuffing. If you have a good answer, please implement it (as many distros and applications will win with better data).

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                • #18
                  Originally posted by coder View Post
                  You're looking at the wrong thing. Instead of looking at when the first CPU was released that supported v2 features, you need to look at when the last CPUs were released that don't support v3.
                  You're not wrong, but in so far as that statement is relevant to this point:

                  "Without hard data showing that a meaningful percentage of your user base will be impacted"

                  Will weird and wonderful landfill-chromebooks constitute a meaningful percentage of the opensuse ALP userbase in ~2024?

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                  • #19
                    Originally posted by Jedibeeftrix View Post
                    Will weird and wonderful landfill-chromebooks constitute a meaningful percentage of the opensuse ALP userbase in ~2024?
                    I'm not so concerned about "disposable" chromebooks, but it's a popular platform for mini-PCs, embededd, and industrial applications. And those sorts of devices can easily stick around for a decade.

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                    • #20
                      Originally posted by CommunityMember View Post
                      whenever "instrumentation" (i.e. reporting home) is brought up you get into a mess of privacy issues, which no one has yet offered a way to both make things truly anonymous while not supporting ballot stuffing.
                      My employer makes appliances which typically don't have access to the public internet. So, you automatically miss a subset of the population, even before considering the "paranoid" folks.

                      Probably a lot of corporate environments would disable telemetry, as well.

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