The Jackass! Project for Intel ~x86

Bob P · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 9:46 pm Post subject:

to make that a little clearer:

CHOST 586 supports Pentium Classic
CHOST 586 supports Pentium-MMX
CHOST 686 supports Pentium Pro
CHOST 686 supports Pentium2
CHOST 686 supports Pentium3
CHOST 686 supports Pentium4

The way we're doing the releases -- Pentium, Pentium 2, Pentium 3, Pentium 4 -- has been following the Pentium "numeric" chip groupings. The Pro is an oddball character that is somewhere between a Pentium and a Pentium 2. The evolution went like this: Pentium diverged into two paths -- Pentium Pro, and Pentium MMX. these two paths re-converged at Pentium 2. The Pentium MMX instruction set is a superset of Pentium, as does the MMX set. unfortunately, MMX and Pro enchanced instructions sets are mutually exclusive with one antoher, but the Pentium 2 includes all of the instructions in both groups. clear as mud?

practically speaking, its easiest to just have one Pentium CLASSIC ball that covers all pentiums. that is the universal ball that everyone intel and amd can rely on, and imho this should always be the first tarball to be built or updated, as it will get everyone up and running.

the P-Pro and MMX guys have to use the Pentium Classic tarball and they are invariably going to want to rebuild their toolkits, which is an incredibly painful task. such is life. personally, i have Classic, MMX and P-Pro processors continuously in use, and for me the standard Pentium Classic tarball instruction set is good enough, as none of those boxes get used for GUI applications where i'd actually rely on those enhanced instructions.
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obsidianblackhawk · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 9:46 pm Post subject:

Sith_Happens · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 9:49 pm Post subject:

obsidianblackhawk · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 9:50 pm Post subject:

Bob P · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 9:52 pm Post subject:

Sith_Happens · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:02 pm Post subject:

obsidianblackhawk · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:09 pm Post subject:

BTW if anybody cares my real name is jeremy. But feel free to call me whatever you'd like. And As far as the whole honor thing nobody i know even knows that i'm working with you guys on this so no worries from my end

deflin39 · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:10 pm Post subject:

Pretty sweet project you have rolling here!

monkey89 · Guru Joined: 08 Mar 2004 Posts: 596

Sorry if I missed it, but do you have an IRC channel on Freenode or something?

-Monkey

Bob P · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:14 pm Post subject:

Sith_Happens · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:16 pm Post subject:

Bob P · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:19 pm Post subject:

ryan, have you had a chance to check out that patch yet?
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Bob P · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:22 pm Post subject:

Sith_Happens · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:24 pm Post subject:

Jackass Project · n00b Joined: 29 Mar 2005 Posts: 3

ultimately, the leader of this project has to be the biggest jackass. :oops:

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I am the brains behind Jackass.

Sith_Happens · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:27 pm Post subject:

Bob P · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:31 pm Post subject:

monkey89 · Guru Joined: 08 Mar 2004 Posts: 596

deflin39 · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:32 pm Post subject:

Sith_Happens · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:33 pm Post subject:

Sith_Happens · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:43 pm Post subject:

Jackass avatar:

There is the donkey from shrek.

I could cut and shrink the face of this donkey.

Or I turn that ASCII donkey's head you like so much into an image for you.

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Bob P · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:45 pm Post subject:

i don't know for sure, but 600 MHz doesn't seem like enough bogomips to create all those balls ... man, this project will bring your PC to its knees for a week, and that's only on a single pass to create one set of tarballs. realistically speaking, you may not be able to use your PC to do anything else for a week at a time. are you sure that you have an idle PC that you're willing to give away like that?

ryan, i know that this isn't your job, but i'm wondering how cross compiling would work on your dual P4 bluebox. there's no doubt in my mind that you have the most processing power of anyone who's interested. i think a 600 MHz AMD would be comparable to me trying to do it on my P3. it would take forever...

if you really want to try it on your AMD, the first thing to do involves paperwork, not actual compiling. to start off, you need to outline of the sub-architectures of the tarballs that will be released for AMD. this means that you have to determine exactly how many tarballs will be needed for the AMD archtiecture, and how they will need to be divided to best suit all AMD users (like we did with the pentiums). then, you have to post sample make.confs for each sub-arch for other AMD users to agree upon. only then can you actually experiment and determine what CFLAGS work best for each AMD processor subtype, and verify that they don't break anything. then when that is done, you have to actually try creating the stageballs, and test them.

come to think of it, the AMD side of this project is going to be harder than i thought it was going to be. we've extensively tested the intel CFLAGS through a slow evolution of the Stage 1/3 NPTL guides over a period of months, and we've largely ignored optimizing for AMD. we've pretty much got the intel CFLAGS settled, but i have to admit we have no clue about what the optimal CFLAGS will be for AMD. optimally (pun), i think we need a core group of AMD guys who are willing to run Acovea on their AMD boxes and analyze CFLAG combinations before doing anything else... i did this long long long ago with the pentiums...

of course, they could just use the pentium stageball and rebuild to suit their own needs...
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Sith_Happens · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:49 pm Post subject:

Well deflin, we could still use your help, even if you don't end up building stages:

1) We still need somebody to test stages, and you have one, possibly two AMD machines.

2) Secondly, as Bob P stated, we still haven't outlined the AMD half of the project, so you could be of great help in that area.

As far as outlining the AMD half of the project:

The steps as I outlined earlier for making the stages should be fine on the AMD, the problem is in what architectures we need to build for to cover the AMD spectrum, and what the make.conf's for each machine should look like.
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"That question was less stupid; though you asked it in a profoundly stupid way."
I'm the brains behind Jackass! | Tutorials: Shorewall

Bob P · Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:51 pm Post subject:

hmm. IRC? i have to fly the n00b flag here and sheepishly admit that i've never used IRC.

the fact that we are in different timezones does add a twist to the problem. the forum seems to be working pretty well for now, but i'm all for whatever works for people. i'm just glad that the Gentoo Forums is putting up with us. this thread is growing like a weed.
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