Re: What do CPU-specific packages imply?

[Arun Sharma <arun@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Dec 06, 2000 at 05:32:50PM +0530, Biju Chacko wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> As you know, some distros like Mandrake advertise Pentium specific packages 
> as a feature. What does this imply? I assume at the very least this means 
> that the binaries include more efficient instructions that are available 
> only in the Pentium instruction set. Is there any more to it?

There is not much else. Basically, they compiled the same packages with
CPU specific flags to gcc.

> Is there any *real* performance improvement when using i586 packages?
> Can anybody shed any light on this? Arun?

It depends on the kind of application. If you're running a scientific
application, with all the time spent in some tight inner loop, yeah
you'll see significant improvements.

For apps like a browser or a desktop, I'd be surprised if the improvement
was > 10%

	-Arun