Via C3 support under FreeBSD

[Damian Gerow]

Thus spake J. Seth Henry (jshamlet at comcast.net) [02/06/03 16:01]:
> Also, most modern CPU's use the 686 cputype, not just the Pentium Pro's.
> Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 both use it, as well as the AMD Duron/Athlon
> CPU's (and I'm sure the latest cores are no different) I believe the 586
> class CPU's were retired with the K6-2/3 series, and the first gen Pentium
> processors, ending with the P5-266.

Yes, I figured as much.  My question stemmed from the fact that the arch is
labelled as 'pentiumpro', and I'm definitely out of my comfort level talking
about the different levels of pentium and what came first and what came next
and who does what and where and how.

One thing I haven't tried is leaving out the I586_CPU in the kernel config
and seeing if that will result in any changes.  Hopefully I won't be
shooting myself in the foot -- just compiling right now.

(It looks like I just can't set CPUTYPE=i686 in make.conf at this point.)

Out of curiousity, is anyone working on any C3-specific optimizations (i.e.
CPUTYPE=c3)?

> BTW - I figure you must have the M10000 everyone is tooting about. How
> well does FreeBSD support the video subsystem on that board?

Actually, I don't.  The big thing about the M10000 is the Nehemiah core,
which I'm also in the midst of picking up.  I can post word on it if I can
actually find a retailer up here in Canada.  I'm pretty impressed with the
Ezra core, and since this box is just a home firewall, I don't much care
about the lack of a full-speed FPU or any SSE or what have you - so long as
it can pass packets faster and do SSH sessions smoother than a Pentium 100,
I'm happy.