On Fri, Apr 21, 2000 at 06:21:53PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> I'd hate to have a kernel that works 99% of the time but then has
> occasional problems on some very rare machines that are really hard to
> track down. But I'd _almost_ like to just make the movb the default and
> have a CONFIG_BROKEN_P6_ORDERING options for the very very special case.
So I guess that the availability of a program that detects if your processor
is of a vulnerable stepping might swing the balance? If nasty problems pop
up, we can point people at that program and have them run it. Or perhaps the
kernel can warn when booting.
In this silly day and age, we need every percent of speed increase we can
get, I'm afraid. I guess that every x months, where x is small, we get more
new Linux users then there were ever before. The amount of people having a
PPro-of-very-early-stepping will shrink rapidly.
Regards,
bert 'Actually has a PPro-of-very-early-stepping' hubert.
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