Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] OSX x86_32 host support

[Johannes Schindelin]

Hi,

On Tue, 15 Jan 2008, Alexander Graf wrote:

> Jamie Lokier wrote:
> > Alexander Graf wrote:
> >   
> >> I believe the 5% performance hit that goes with them is no real 
> >> problem, as most people should be using x86_64 nowadays anyway.
> >
> > *Boggle*!  x86_64 is only a few years old, and cheap low-power x86_64 
> > laptops are relatively recent.
>
> So you really want to do dynamic retranslation on ancient hardware?

Isn't it a little bit selfish to leave all those poor people behind who 
just plainly cannot _afford_ better hardware?

> To me emulated systems already feel slow on really recent machines, I 
> don't want to go back to something even slower.

Yes, keep on rubbing it in.

> If you use kqemu there even is near no performance hit at all, which I 
> believe is the main use of qemu on i386 anyway.

Another use is to make sure your software works on different hardware than 
you actually have.

> Furthermore x86_64 is _way_ faster, as it provides a lot more registers.

Again, just rub it in.

> I think the benefit you get from cutting the gcc3 dependency is way more 
> important than a major performance hit that people will usually only see 
> on the next release of qemu, by which time things have shifted towards 
> x86_64 even more.

AFAICT the gcc4 problem is not even half-way solved, yet you talk about 
cutting the gcc3 dependency.

Tell you what: solve the gcc4 problem first, not only on x86_64, but also 
on i386 (since it is still the most widespread platform), and ARM, and 
PPC, and all the other supported platforms, and _then_ we can talk about 
cutting the gcc3 dependency.

Hth,
Dscho