david wrote: > At 10:31 PM 7/16/2011, you wrote: >> On 07/16/11 7:50 PM, david wrote: >>> If the I386 (or i686, never could figure out why the name change) >> I386 was the original 386 CPU, which ran at speeds from 16 to 33Mhz >> i486 includes a few additional instructions on the 486 processor, and >> IIRC, ran at speeds from 25 to 100Mhz >> i586 is the original pentium, at 60, 66, 90, 100 up to about 133Mhz >> i686 is the pentium pro and pentium-II, -III, -IV and everything newer. >> >> i686 added a few minor new instructions but also has additional memory >> management functionality missing from the earlier versions. >> >> its just gotten silly to try and keep backwards support for the early >> versions of the CPUs that have been obsolete for so long. >> >> really, we should have compiler targets for optimizing on the P4 >> 'netburst' CPUs and another for the core processors as they are all >> pipelined differently. as it turns out, however, the core 2 and core >> I3/5/7 do pretty well with pentium-II and -III style optimization >> strategies, as well as, of course, the x86_64 support. >> >> >> -- >> john r pierce N 37, W 122 >> santa cruz ca mid-left coast > > > Folks > My initial post was perhaps mis-stated. I don't have any problem > with dropping processors before the Pentium class machines (aka > I686), my question was only a naming question. > > Why are some RPMs named el6.i386, and some with el6.i686. It must > make automated package selection algorithms more difficult. > Packages are created by large number of various people for number of different distros. i386 marks packages that will run on older CPU's, i686 packages that will run only on PII and newer CPU's. It is simple as that. Changing everything to i686 would only wreck havoc for distros supporting older CPU's. This would be the jest of the (I am sure more complex) matter. Ljubomir