how long to keep support for gcc on x86?

[Peter Wemm]

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 6:51 PM, Ian Lepore
<freebsd at damnhippie.dyndns.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 2013-01-13 at 16:58 -0800, Peter Wemm wrote:
>> On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Adrian Chadd <adrian at freebsd.org> wrote:
>> > ... ?
>> >
>> > As an embedded platform, I'd expect that people will want to support
>> > any feature which dramatically boosts performance whilst reducing CPU.
>> >
>> > Also, if Intel decide to keep trying to push low power x86 for mobile
>> > applications, rather than ARM, x86 may just make a resurgence in
>> > places you once thought were servers.
>> >
>> > 32 bit x86 isn't legacy and won't be for a long time to come.
>>
>> Our buildworld environment and embedded $everything isn't well known
>> for being embedded friendly.  I'd wager that if somebody was trying to
>> use an i386 kernel in an embedded device where every last thing
>> counted, they'd be using an external toolchain targeted for their
>> platform and some very selective cross-building.  Compiler of
>> $your_choice would be on the table if you were doing external
>> compiling, and.. the default in-tree compiler does support AES-NI on
>> both i386 and amd64, and the logical other choice (gcc-4.6+ and
>> binutils) also does.
>
> Ummm.  Search for "industrial single board computer."  They're not rare.
> Lots of us build products around them.  Some of us use FreeBSD to do so,
> with the stock toolchain.  I sure hope support for 32 bit x86 isn't
> fading away any time soon.

I had a quick look.  Yes, there were quite a few devices, but I didn't
find any 32bit-only that had AES-NI.

-- 
Peter Wemm - peter at wemm.org; peter at FreeBSD.org; peter at yahoo-inc.com; KI6FJV
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