Re: [9fans] broken floating point exceptions and fpregs

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

On Sat May 25 09:59:39 EDT 2013, khm-9@intma.in wrote:
> On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 09:47:05AM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:
> > 
> > why don't we just let the 386 kernel rest in peace and use
> > 64-bit for sse?
> 
> Let's all go buy new computers instead of using the ones we have?

x86_64 has been around since 2003, and on nearly every x86 machine for
the last 8 years.  sse2 has been around since 2001.  there is not a large
percentage of currently-running x86 machines that have sse2 but do not have
x64-bit extensions, and this percentage is generally decreasing.

i put sse2 in the 386 kernel a few years ago, before the compilers supported
it.  this was to support a linuxemu project.  the linux tools needed sse.

however, when it came to putting sse2 into a general kernel—and that
includes answering questions cinap is posing, like how do we deal with
different abis in the debugger, etc.—it seemed more disruption than it
was worth.  now that the 64-bit kernel is real, and supports even low-end
hardware like atom, i would rather concentrate on making
the 64-bit kernel better.

- erik