lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2009]   [Jan]   [15]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
    /
    Date
    From
    SubjectRe: Is 386 processor still supported?
    On Thu, 15 Jan 2009, Jan-Benedict Glaw wrote:

    > * Debian's baseline libc is compiled to use LOCK and some other
    > newish instructions that are not available on a real i386 CPU.

    LOCK dates back to the 8086 -- it has to work with the i386. What is not
    supported are the following i486 additions: CMPXCHG (amusingly enough
    early i486 steppings used a different opcode for this one; no idea if it
    is still possible to find such a CPU), XADD and BSWAP, the latter being
    fairly unimportant.

    > * There was a patch flying around to introduce a kernel-based
    > emulator for those instructions. However, this was (at that time)
    > neither included in Debian's kernel, nor in the upstream sources.

    UP emulation of CMPXCHG and XADD for userland should be rather trivial,
    so why not include it like with LL/SC for MIPS?

    Maciej


    \
     
     \ /
      Last update: 2009-01-15 14:25    [W:5.586 / U:0.176 seconds]
    ©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site