Re: Pre-built binaries vs. performance

[Alex Vong]

address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Hello Guix!
>
> This post is a followup to our previous discussions on how to handle
> architecture-specific optimizations:
>
>   
> https://guix-hpc.bordeaux.inria.fr/blog/2018/01/pre-built-binaries-vs-performance/
>
> Comments welcome!
>
> Ludo’.

I encountered this problem several years ago when packaging for
Debian. The program (a single binary) could be compiled with 3 different
sets of options: generic, AVX or AVX2. The goal was to package it so
that users didn't have to specify which version to install. The hack I
came up with was to compile all 3 variants and wrote a shell wrapper to
run self-tests for all 3 variants. If the self-test for the AVX2 variant
works, then pick it. If not, try AVX. If not, fall back to generic.

This way was quite crude. Now I think we can make use of
/proc/cpuinfo. Will this method work? An obvious disadvantage is that
more disk space will be needed.