GENERIC - Raising the bar

[Joerg Sonnenberger]

On Fri, Mar 11, 2005 at 04:58:37PM -0500, Adrian Nida wrote:
> Garance A Drosihn wrote:
> >Note that FreeBSD 5.x and 6.x do not include the 386 code in
> >the default GENERIC kernel.  The installer CD might be compiled
> >with "cpu I386_CPU" included, but the GENERIC kernel does not...
> 
> Just curious, here.
> 
> What would be the harm in having GENERIC.386, GENERIC.486, etc. and then 
> programmatically setting up GENERIC as a symlink to the one closest 
> matching the hardware?

Overhead for any changes to GENERIC, e.g. new drivers. Like I already said,
it doesn't buy us much, because we don't use cmpxchg. Some code, e.g.
endian conversion would be faster, but that's all within limits of a few
percent at most. Compile your own kernel if you care.

Joerg