on 4-7-2008 11:06 AM Manuel Tuthill spake the following: >> It looks like the Geode is i586 but with cmov functionality. >> >> It strikes me as odd that AMD would build a 586 processor with cmov >> instructions, but also build a 686 class without that instruction set. >> Makes >> me wonder if it was an engineering snafu that was too costly to fix for >> the >> quantity they expected to sell. > > > Wow, that seems very odd. cmov was only part of the i686 instruction set so > this still wouldn't work with a native i686 distribution right? > > BTW it was VIA not AMD who made the "engineering snafu" on the VIA C3 class > chips. Rather than being a "snafu" they interpreted the IA32 specifications > a little to literary, the CMOV is an optional instruction, but as fair as I > understand if it's optional it shouldn't be used at all (since there is no > guarantee that it will be available to all i686 cpu's) but since every other > i686 class cpu had the instruction when they were doing GCC it got left. I totally forgot the timeline. VIA did make these chips long before the AMD buyout. -- MailScanner is like deodorant... You hope everybody uses it, and you notice quickly if they don't!!!! -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 250 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/attachments/20080407/3d5fe8ee/attachment-0007.sig>