Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Tony Nelson  said:
> > * pre-AMD Geode processors
> 
> It may be that discussions have happened elsewhere, but the current
> F12 Feature page does exclude the Athlon and similar processors.

That's "(pre-AMD) Geode", not "pre-(AMD Geode)".

Darn language without valid precedence rules.  How about a stack based
language, maybe "RPE" (e.g. "AMD Geode, pre").
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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Deji Akingunola]

On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 5:10 AM, Andrew Haley wrote:
> Deji Akingunola wrote:

>
>> unless of course you mean we should be stuck with the old version.
>> The only way to produce atlas binary for architectures not provided
>> for in the upstream tarball, is to bootstrap it on that particular
>> arch. Unfortunately none of Fedora build infrastructure is based on
>> PII or less.
>
> I don't quite understand this.  Why would we need to bootstrap *on* the
> old arch to compile it *for* the old arch?  Some configury weirdness,
> presumably.  That sounds fixable.  Would it be OK if I did a little
> digging to see if I could fix it?
>
Sure, it'll make some folks happier if you can come up with a fix.

Deji

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Andrew Haley]

Deji Akingunola wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Joachim 
> wrote:
>>> I think there's a valid case for making an exception to this: when a
>>> package is an accelerated version of a particular library.  That is,
>>> when the basic functionality of a library is available in a i686
>>> Fedora package, but a special SSEx version of the library makes use of
>>> faster instructions.

>> Right now, there exist a number of packages which explicitly pull in
>> atlas instead of the also available generic packages blas/lapack which
>> do not exhibit these severe restrictions.
>> Earlier versions of the Fedora atlas package actually supported a
>> wider range of processors including even such offering 3dnow! and also
>> plain x86. The current behaviour (code depending on lapack aborts
>> because of illegal instructions) is a regression which has been
>> introduced by the packager.
>>
> Correction: The current behaviour was not introduced by the packager,
> it is because of changes in the upstream's design of the package;

Yes, we know that it's an upstream change.  I was wondering if there
were some way to configure things so that the library only gets used
when it would work.

> unless of course you mean we should be stuck with the old version.
> The only way to produce atlas binary for architectures not provided
> for in the upstream tarball, is to bootstrap it on that particular
> arch. Unfortunately none of Fedora build infrastructure is based on
> PII or less.

I don't quite understand this.  Why would we need to bootstrap *on* the
old arch to compile it *for* the old arch?  Some configury weirdness,
presumably.  That sounds fixable.  Would it be OK if I did a little
digging to see if I could fix it?

Andrew.

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Adam Williamson]

On Fri, 2009-08-14 at 17:01 -0400, Tony Nelson wrote:
> On 09-08-14 09:20:04, Naheem Zaffar wrote:
> > Not Bill, but from my understanding, SSE2 was originally going to be
> > required and that question must have been presented and answered at
> > that point. Once the main page got updated after discussion, the 
> > original questions that no longer apply have not been removed.
> 
> Apparantly I'm not making myself clear.  That page specifically 
> excludes all AMD processors before the Geode LX, thus it excludes the 
> Athlon:
> 
> > * pre-AMD Geode processors

You're reading it wrong. That doesn't mean 'AMD processors before the
Geode', it means 'Geode processors before AMD bought out the Geode line
from NatSemi'.

Since someone's read it wrong, that's a good indication it should be
worded more clearly on the page :)

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Jesse Keating]

On Aug 14, 2009, at 14:01, Tony Nelson   
wrote:



On 09-08-14 09:20:04, Naheem Zaffar wrote:

Not Bill, but from my understanding, SSE2 was originally going to be
required and that question must have been presented and answered at
that point. Once the main page got updated after discussion, the
original questions that no longer apply have not been removed.


Apparantly I'm not making myself clear.  That page specifically
excludes all AMD processors before the Geode LX, thus it excludes the
Athlon:


* pre-AMD Geode processors


It may be that discussions have happened elsewhere, but the current
F12 Feature page does exclude the Athlon and similar processors.



Pretty sure this meant any geode before AMD picked them up, not any  
amd processor before the geode.


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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[drago01]

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 11:01 PM, Tony
Nelson wrote:
> On 09-08-14 09:20:04, Naheem Zaffar wrote:
>> Not Bill, but from my understanding, SSE2 was originally going to be
>> required and that question must have been presented and answered at
>> that point. Once the main page got updated after discussion, the
>> original questions that no longer apply have not been removed.
>
> Apparantly I'm not making myself clear.  That page specifically
> excludes all AMD processors before the Geode LX, thus it excludes the
> Athlon:
>
>> * pre-AMD Geode processors
>
> It may be that discussions have happened elsewhere, but the current
> F12 Feature page does exclude the Athlon and similar processors.

The Athlon supports at least the same instructions as the Geode.
Athlon and PIII support where the main reasons why people where
against a sse2 requirement.

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Tony Nelson]

On 09-08-14 09:20:04, Naheem Zaffar wrote:
> Not Bill, but from my understanding, SSE2 was originally going to be
> required and that question must have been presented and answered at
> that point. Once the main page got updated after discussion, the 
> original questions that no longer apply have not been removed.

Apparantly I'm not making myself clear.  That page specifically 
excludes all AMD processors before the Geode LX, thus it excludes the 
Athlon:

> * pre-AMD Geode processors

It may be that discussions have happened elsewhere, but the current
F12 Feature page does exclude the Athlon and similar processors.


> 2009/8/14 Tony Nelson
> >
> >
> > That doesn't actually quite say about SSE2, but at
> > :
> >
> > > _Bill Nottingham_ Once a set has been decided on, this should be
> > > pretty trivial. With respect to the proposal, 'grep sse2 /proc/
> > > cpuinfo' should work.
> >
> > Bill?

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Nalin Dahyabhai]

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 10:38:58AM +0100, Andrew Haley wrote:
> Kevin Kofler wrote:
> > We need to provide "architectural defaults" for plain i686, even crappy 
> > ones, they just need to work at all.
> 
> I think there's a valid case for making an exception to this: when a
> package is an accelerated version of a particular library.  That is,
> when the basic functionality of a library is available in a i686
> Fedora package, but a special SSEx version of the library makes use of
> faster instructions.

The run-time linker on i386 can already pick up an SSE2-specific build
of a shared library if it's available -- the i386 gmp package makes use
of this.  Of course, both builds have to provide the same interfaces for
that to work, and I'm not sufficiently familiar with this set of
libraries to know if they do.

If they do, and if the libc maintainers think it's worth doing, this
support could be extended to cover SSE- and SSE3-specific versions.  We
could then package these optimized versions of the library with the
fallback works-everywhere version and let ld.so sort out the details at
runtime.

That's quite a few "if"s, and I'm not one of the people who'd have to
actually do the work, so I'll shut up now.

HTH,

Nalin

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Deji Akingunola]

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Joachim wrote:
>> I think there's a valid case for making an exception to this: when a
>> package is an accelerated version of a particular library.  That is,
>> when the basic functionality of a library is available in a i686
>> Fedora package, but a special SSEx version of the library makes use of
>> faster instructions.
>>
>> Andrew.
>
> Right now, there exist a number of packages which explicitly pull in
> atlas instead of the also available generic packages blas/lapack which
> do not exhibit these severe restrictions.
> Earlier versions of the Fedora atlas package actually supported a
> wider range of processors including even such offering 3dnow! and also
> plain x86. The current behaviour (code depending on lapack aborts
> because of illegal instructions) is a regression which has been
> introduced by the packager.
>
Correction: The current behaviour was not introduced by the packager,
it is because of changes in the upstream's design of the package;
unless of course you mean we should be stuck with the old version.
The only way to produce atlas binary for architectures not provided
for in the upstream tarball, is to bootstrap it on that particular
arch. Unfortunately none of Fedora build infrastructure is based on
PII or less.

Deji

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Joachim]

> I think there's a valid case for making an exception to this: when a
> package is an accelerated version of a particular library.  That is,
> when the basic functionality of a library is available in a i686
> Fedora package, but a special SSEx version of the library makes use of
> faster instructions.
>
> Andrew.

Right now, there exist a number of packages which explicitly pull in
atlas instead of the also available generic packages blas/lapack which
do not exhibit these severe restrictions.
Earlier versions of the Fedora atlas package actually supported a
wider range of processors including even such offering 3dnow! and also
plain x86. The current behaviour (code depending on lapack aborts
because of illegal instructions) is a regression which has been
introduced by the packager.

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Naheem Zaffar]

Not Bill, but from my understanding, SSE2 was originally going to be
required and that question must have been presented and answered at that
point. Once the main page got updated after discussion, the original
questions that no longer apply have not been removed.

2009/8/14 Tony Nelson
>
>
> That doesn't actually quite say about SSE2, but at
> :
>
> > _Bill Nottingham_ Once a set has been decided on, this should be
> > pretty trivial. With respect to the proposal, 'grep sse2 /proc/
> > cpuinfo' should work.
>
> Bill?
>
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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Tony Nelson]

I'm late replying -- had trouble with my mail server -- so I'm moving 
all my replies to Bill Nottingham's post, as I think he can fix the 
wiki pages most authoritatively to not say that Athlons will not work,
if that is indeed the proper thing to do, given that so many packages 
depend on packages that are only built for SSE2.




If necessary, I can install Rawhide and see if it boots, and then edit 
the above wiki page and the Alpha release notes, but I'd prefer if 
someone who already uses an Athlon-core processor on Rawhide did it.


On 09-08-13 10:34:58, Peter Robinson wrote:
> Tony Nelson wrote:
 ...
> > Is there a simple way for ordinary users to know if their CPU is
> > expected to work on F12 (as an "i686" according to GCC)?  Is there 
> > a tool to run that doesn't require downloading F12?
> 
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/F12X86Support
> 
> Its outlined in the link above. An athlon should be fine. Basically 
> if its i586 + cmov it should work. You can tell if you have cmov by
> looking at /proc/cpuinfo.

According to that link, an Athlon is specifically excluded.  According 
to the Talk:Features/F12X86Support link 
, SSE2 is 
required.


> Originally it wasn't planned to support them but there was enough
> discussion to change peoples minds :-)

If that has changed, then those wiki pages need updating, as well as 
the Release Notes and release announcements.  Thanks.


On 09-08-13 10:35:29, Jon Ciesla wrote:
> Quoting Bill Nottingham:
> 
> Given the loud feedback, I've updated the proposal at:
>   https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/F12X86Support
> 
> The revised proposal:
> 
> - Build all packages for i686 (this requires cmov)
> - Optimize for Atom
> 
> Why?
 ...

That doesn't actually quite say about SSE2, but at 
:

> _Bill Nottingham_ Once a set has been decided on, this should be 
> pretty trivial. With respect to the proposal, 'grep sse2 /proc/
> cpuinfo' should work.

Bill?

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Andrew Haley]

Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Joachim wrote:
>> I do not understand then, that there exist i686 packages which have
>> higher requirements.
> 
> Those packages need to be fixed.
> 
> I know there are some audio production packages which are building with SSE 
> enabled (and required, those packages don't do runtime detection), IIRC in 
> both Fedora and RPM Fusion, in blatant violation of the guidelines, and the 
> packager(s) refuse(s) to fix this (they even do it intentionally for new 
> packages, despite my objections in the reviews). If I'm not mistaken, most 
> of the offenders are owned by oget (Orcan Ogetbil), but if I were you, I'd 
> check all the audio production packages.
> 
>> Look at the ATLAS library for which I had filed a bug because only
>> SSE/SSE2/SSE3 variants are provided
> 
> This one needs to get fixed too, of course.
> 
> I've looked at how Debian is handling this, but they're stuck at an old 
> version (3.6.0), maybe exactly because of this issue. :-(
> 
> We need to provide "architectural defaults" for plain i686, even crappy 
> ones, they just need to work at all.

I think there's a valid case for making an exception to this: when a
package is an accelerated version of a particular library.  That is,
when the basic functionality of a library is available in a i686
Fedora package, but a special SSEx version of the library makes use of
faster instructions.

Andrew.

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Kevin Kofler]

Joachim wrote:
> I do not understand then, that there exist i686 packages which have
> higher requirements.

Those packages need to be fixed.

I know there are some audio production packages which are building with SSE 
enabled (and required, those packages don't do runtime detection), IIRC in 
both Fedora and RPM Fusion, in blatant violation of the guidelines, and the 
packager(s) refuse(s) to fix this (they even do it intentionally for new 
packages, despite my objections in the reviews). If I'm not mistaken, most 
of the offenders are owned by oget (Orcan Ogetbil), but if I were you, I'd 
check all the audio production packages.

> Look at the ATLAS library for which I had filed a bug because only
> SSE/SSE2/SSE3 variants are provided

This one needs to get fixed too, of course.

I've looked at how Debian is handling this, but they're stuck at an old 
version (3.6.0), maybe exactly because of this issue. :-(

We need to provide "architectural defaults" for plain i686, even crappy 
ones, they just need to work at all.

Kevin Kofler


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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 14:37:54 -0400,
  Bill Nottingham  wrote:
> Joachim (joachim.frie...@googlemail.com) said: 
> > Moreover, it is even pulled in by basic packages like gnome-games (!).
> 
> Well, you know, if you want to play sudoku, you *need* a linear algebra
> package.

? Don't you need a sat solver?

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Jussi Lehtola]

On Thu, 2009-08-13 at 14:37 -0400, Bill Nottingham wrote:
> Joachim (joachim.frie...@googlemail.com) said: 
> > Moreover, it is even pulled in by basic packages like gnome-games (!).
> 
> Well, you know, if you want to play sudoku, you *need* a linear algebra
> package.
> 
> (See earlier threads about numpy dependencies in pygtk.)

But one can compile against LAPACK, which admittedly is slower than
ATLAS, but works like a charm.
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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Jon Ciesla]

Joachim wrote:

2009/8/13 Andrew Haley :

  

"If you can create such architectural default let me know, and I'll use it."

... but none ever arrived ...



Comment #4 ... 2009-08-05 04:36:24 EDT
I will investigate how to create an "architectural defaults" on my
local system for inclusion into the Fedora package.

This bug was closed on 2009-08-04, my comment is from 2009-08-05, and
today we are 2009-08-13!

If I can provide a fix I will certainly do it, but this does not
prevent the package from being currently incompatible with the minimum
requirements for F12 let alone F11 for which the bug had been reported
in the first place. Thus, it should be removed from the repo or at
least be made truly optional, the first option clearly being the
cleaner one. Resolution CANTFIX is not acceptable.

  
That's not really an option.  Atlas is required by things that are 
required by many, many other things.


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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Bill Nottingham]

Joachim (joachim.frie...@googlemail.com) said: 
> Moreover, it is even pulled in by basic packages like gnome-games (!).

Well, you know, if you want to play sudoku, you *need* a linear algebra
package.

(See earlier threads about numpy dependencies in pygtk.)

Bill

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Joachim]

2009/8/13 Andrew Haley :

> "If you can create such architectural default let me know, and I'll use it."
>
> ... but none ever arrived ...

Comment #4 ... 2009-08-05 04:36:24 EDT
I will investigate how to create an "architectural defaults" on my
local system for inclusion into the Fedora package.

This bug was closed on 2009-08-04, my comment is from 2009-08-05, and
today we are 2009-08-13!

If I can provide a fix I will certainly do it, but this does not
prevent the package from being currently incompatible with the minimum
requirements for F12 let alone F11 for which the bug had been reported
in the first place. Thus, it should be removed from the repo or at
least be made truly optional, the first option clearly being the
cleaner one. Resolution CANTFIX is not acceptable.

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Andrew Haley]

Joachim wrote:
>> Quoting Bill Nottingham:
>>
>> Given the loud feedback, I've updated the proposal at:
>>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/F12X86Support
>>
>> The revised proposal:
>>
>> - Build all packages for i686 (this requires cmov)
>> - Optimize for Atom
> 
> I do not understand then, that there exist i686 packages which have
> higher requirements. Look at the ATLAS library for which I had filed a
> bug because only SSE/SSE2/SSE3 variants are provided,
> 
>   https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=510498 ,
> 
> which got closed as CANTFIX. This implies that any program linked
> against these libraries is likely to fail on Pentium Pro and Pentium
> II systems, the first one being the archetype of the i686 platform.
> Moreover, it is even pulled in by basic packages like gnome-games (!).

>From reading the bugzilla, that looks to me like a bug upstream.

The tail was

"If you can create such architectural default let me know, and I'll use it."

... but none ever arrived ...

Andrew.

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Joachim]

> Quoting Bill Nottingham:
>
> Given the loud feedback, I've updated the proposal at:
>        https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/F12X86Support
>
> The revised proposal:
>
> - Build all packages for i686 (this requires cmov)
> - Optimize for Atom

I do not understand then, that there exist i686 packages which have
higher requirements. Look at the ATLAS library for which I had filed a
bug because only SSE/SSE2/SSE3 variants are provided,

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=510498 ,

which got closed as CANTFIX. This implies that any program linked
against these libraries is likely to fail on Pentium Pro and Pentium
II systems, the first one being the archetype of the i686 platform.
Moreover, it is even pulled in by basic packages like gnome-games (!).

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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Jon Ciesla]

Tony Nelson wrote:
I've noticed that F12 will require a CPU with "i686" architecture, and 
that my Athlon 1.2GHz won't qualify.  I accept that F11 is the last 
Fedora release that I'll be able to use.  My concern is that many 
present Fedora users will be unpleasantly surprised that a new 
installation doesn't work, or at least that they've wasted the 
download.


The Release Notes, starting with the F12 Alpha Release Notes, should 
tell users about this, and so should the release announcements.  The 
difficulty is in telling them what exactly is an "i686" CPU, as that is 
defined by GCC and is said to be a moving target (over the years).  I'm 
hoping that someone qualified can make the appropriate changes to the 
Releases Notes wiki (I don't know what all the requirements are, though 
I do know that the Athlon does not support SSE/SSE2).


Is there a simple way for ordinary users to know if their CPU is 
expected to work on F12 (as an "i686" according to GCC)?  Is there a 
tool to run that doesn't require downloading F12?


  

Quoting Bill Nottingham:

Given the loud feedback, I've updated the proposal at:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/F12X86Support

The revised proposal:

- Build all packages for i686 (this requires cmov)
- Optimize for Atom

Why?

- We don't really support i586 in any meaningful matter
- OLPC still works with base i686
- We are likely doing a mass rebuild for F-12 anyways, might as well switch
 while we're doing it
- Atom is the only currently produced 32-bit x86 chip of note; optimize
 for what's currently available

If you want numbers, I did some benchmarking of code [1] with various
build options on a variety of processors, with the F-11 gcc code. All
of these results are relative to a F-11 baseline of "-march=i586
-mtune=generic".

P4 2.4Ghz   Athlon 3400+Core2Duo E6850  Atom N270
march=i686/ -1.1%   +2.0%   +0.9%   +0.6%
mtune=generic
march=i586/ +0.3%   -0.3%   -0.2%   +1.3%
mtune=atom
march=i686/ -1.5%   +1.2%   +0.5%   +1.7%
mtune=atom

Bill

[1] gzip, bzip2, math simulation, mp3 encode/decode, ogg encode/decode



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Re: F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Peter Robinson]

> I've noticed that F12 will require a CPU with "i686" architecture, and
> that my Athlon 1.2GHz won't qualify.  I accept that F11 is the last
> Fedora release that I'll be able to use.  My concern is that many
> present Fedora users will be unpleasantly surprised that a new
> installation doesn't work, or at least that they've wasted the
> download.
>
> The Release Notes, starting with the F12 Alpha Release Notes, should
> tell users about this, and so should the release announcements.  The
> difficulty is in telling them what exactly is an "i686" CPU, as that is
> defined by GCC and is said to be a moving target (over the years).  I'm
> hoping that someone qualified can make the appropriate changes to the
> Releases Notes wiki (I don't know what all the requirements are, though
> I do know that the Athlon does not support SSE/SSE2).
>
> Is there a simple way for ordinary users to know if their CPU is
> expected to work on F12 (as an "i686" according to GCC)?  Is there a
> tool to run that doesn't require downloading F12?

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/F12X86Support

Its outlined in the link above. An athlon should be fine. Basically if
its i586 + cmov it should work. You can tell if you have cmov by
looking at /proc/cpuinfo.

Originally it wasn't planned to support them but there was enough
discussion to change peoples minds :-)

Peter

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F12 to require "i686", but which CPUs do not qualify?

[Tony Nelson]

I've noticed that F12 will require a CPU with "i686" architecture, and 
that my Athlon 1.2GHz won't qualify.  I accept that F11 is the last 
Fedora release that I'll be able to use.  My concern is that many 
present Fedora users will be unpleasantly surprised that a new 
installation doesn't work, or at least that they've wasted the 
download.

The Release Notes, starting with the F12 Alpha Release Notes, should 
tell users about this, and so should the release announcements.  The 
difficulty is in telling them what exactly is an "i686" CPU, as that is 
defined by GCC and is said to be a moving target (over the years).  I'm 
hoping that someone qualified can make the appropriate changes to the 
Releases Notes wiki (I don't know what all the requirements are, though 
I do know that the Athlon does not support SSE/SSE2).

Is there a simple way for ordinary users to know if their CPU is 
expected to work on F12 (as an "i686" according to GCC)?  Is there a 
tool to run that doesn't require downloading F12?

-- 

TonyN.:'   
  '  

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