i486 base architecture

P at draigBrady.com P at draigBrady.com
Wed Dec 1 14:17:44 UTC 2004


Alan Cox wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 30, 2004 at 11:06:21PM -0500, William M. Quarles wrote:
> 
>>>The only thing 486 might give is the ability to consign the old 
>>>linuxthread stuff to the dustbin of back compatibility.
>>
>>I'm guessing that's supposed to be a joke?
> 
> 
> No its quite serious. 486 adds a lot of the SMP instructions like XADD that
> good threading in user space wants.

True. However they could be emulated inefficiently on 386.
I remember seeing a patch (I think from Andi Kleen) that
added 386 suport to NPTL.

Also note that http://cobind.com/ supports 386

Pádraig.




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