Optimized kernel builds: the straight dope

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Sun, Aug 20, 2006 at 03:59:55PM -0400, John Richard Moser wrote:
> 
> 
> Rocco Stanzione wrote:
> > On Monday 14 August 2006 7:33 pm, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > <snip>
> >> I'm interested to hear (objective, reasoned) feedback on this data and my
> >> conclusions from the members of this list.
> > 
> > The numbers are enough to convince me that we don't need to keep building 
> > these cpu-optimized kernels.  It would be nice, though, to see smp kernels 
> > that don't support 4GB of ram (and that don't incur the penalty for 
> 
> Supporting 4GB RAM and 64GB RAM involves entering PAE mode.  I'm pretty
> sure PAE mode is entered anyway to get an NX bit on newer x86 CPUs that
> have it.  Honestly though I don't know what the freg paging address
> extensions does beyond that :)

I don't think PAE is used for HIGHMEM4G, only for HIGHMEM64G (which is only
used in our very high-end kernel).

-- 
 - mdz