Re: Patches for REALLY TINY 386 kernels

[Helge Hafting]

Andi Kleen wrote:
> > Some people are putting Linux kernels in the "BIOS" (i.e. ROM chip) when
> > using LinuxBIOS (www.linuxbios.org). It _does_ make a lot of difference
> > there how big the kernel is. At the moment you can't do that with
> > anything smaller than a 1 MB chip. But if people could use 512 KB chips
> > because the kernel is small enough that would sure be a great thing.
> >     
>
> I'm sure it would be possibel to save a lot of text size. But I don't
> think removing the relatively small CPUID code is the right way.
> That is just a big maintenance issue for little gain.
>   
Well - anyone compiling linux for BIOS usage is targetting
a single machine.  So an ability to target a single machine is useful,
i.e. run the CPUID at compile-time, put the answer in a constant/macro,
let the optimizer prune the alternatives. :-)

Helge Hafting
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