OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Programming

i686 vs Pentium 4

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Dave Yeo:
I know this has been discussed before, but I think we should revisit as Bitwise has decided to force us to the Netburst (Pentium 4) architecture and it is easier to make an argument here rather then at Github which no longer works well on out old browsers. ideally would be to make arguments here and then reference this thread on Github.
The main difference between the various i386 architectures is how things are optimized and whether simd (MMX, SSE, SSE2) intrinsic's are used. 

Ibrahim Hakeem:
Hi Dave.

Like a lot of us here, I daily OS/2 on modern hardware for whatever tasks are still possible, so I am in complete agreement with you. In BitWise's defence, switching to a more modern infrastructure would likely be at a cost of much more labour in the short-run.

In spite of that, I'm sure the majority of us can agree it's still a serious necessity given that we're stuck to operating within 32bit memory limitations in a browser-oriented 64bit world. It's just impractical for us to be giving up precious memory in favour of sticking with an outdated and inefficient architecture. 32bit x86 consumer processors (primarily in netbooks) still exist and sell despite increasing resource demands from web browsers and other programs, simply because of how CPU instruction sets can cut down on processing overhead, it feels foolish for us to not take advantage of it.

Despite the possibility of our much loved and anticipated browser releasing sooner as a result of sticking to Netburst, it won't be a lasting success by any stretch if we cannot keep up with these demands in whatever ways we can/should.

Eugene Tucker:
I agree with both of you on this. and have no further comment.

Neil Waldhauer:
As an end user, I don't care what instruction set is used. But if I change my settings from i686 to pentium4 with rpm/yum, everything should still work afterward. For me it's not the instruction set, but the quality of the rpm specs.

Martin had to remove rpm/yum entirely and start over to change from i686 to pentium4. If that is what is needed, then please supply a tool to do it in one quick operation.

ivan:
While all the above may be true it also underscores the reason I will not use RPM/YUM on any of my OS/2 based computers.  If I absolutely have to use one of the RPM offerings, I will download from the repository and unpack it on my test computer transferring what is needed to my work computer.

In my opinion all this can/could be avoided by using what we had befor someone decided to follow SUSE linux route - in other words WARPIN. 

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