[ILUG] Linux community insulted by Intel with P4

[Scanlan, Brian (5188)]

I think it's neccessary.
AFAIK the kernel's doing something like this...

"Dum dee dum, hmm, I'm on a Pentium type CPU. Pentiums should return
their family type when I do a CPUID instruction. I can then recognise them
and use model-specific registers, performance counters, and do bug
workarounds...
Agh! What type is this? a 1586? I don't know this! Are you a defective
CPU? Fuck this. *panic*".

Two intresting bits off the LKML - the Pentium IV
is returning family ID 15 because I is 1 and V is 5 in Roman notation.
Seriously.

Apparantly the 786 class might be Itanium running in x86 mode. 

The early patch submitted to LKML decided that the PIV was actually an i686.
Not sure if that's what's being implemented, but it's wrong if that's what
they're doing. Reporting something as something it's not would be a little
childish. "Waah! We preffered the old naming scheme!".

Brian.
-----Original Message-----
From: John P . Looney [mailto:john at antefacto.com]
Sent: 14 December 2000 14:57
To: 'ilug at linux.ie'
Subject: Re: [ILUG] Linux community insulted by Intel with P4


On Thu, Dec 14, 2000 at 02:45:55PM -0000, Noel Carrol mentioned:
> Indeed!  One article I read had Intel saying that the information was
> released to all relevant persons in good time.  In any case its a
patchable
> issue and I believe those exact patches are being prepared, and are even
> avalilable in some cases, as we speak.

 I think the problem being that they didn't know who the relevant people
were, and told the wrong person. Either way, a machine barfing because it
didn't know about the CPUID's is strange...

Kate

-- 
 When I say 'free', I mean 'free': free from bond, of chain or command: 
to go where you will, even to Mordor, Saruman, if you desire. " 
    -- Gandalf, paraphrasing the choice between Free and Non-free software

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