maemo.org - Talk - View Single Post - Windows 8 on ARM Discuss

lma	2011-01-07 , 07:55
Posts: 2,802 \| Thanked: 4,491 times \| Joined on Nov 2007	#58

Originally Posted by attila77

The point was you don't have successor processors that don't have the extensions the previous ones had. In other words, your mainstream lowest common denominator won't change *in the future*, like it just did for ARMs with the Tegra2.

As long you stick to a single CPU vendor and product line, maybe :-) As a data point, my current desktop CPU was launched less than a year ago, and it doesn't do SSSE3 (in fact the Dublin Lenovo is the only box I have around here that can even boot MeeGo/x86).

BTW I'm not sure what the issues with the Tegra2 are, is it just the absence of NEON and VFPv3-D32 or is there more to it?

A funny thing that you mention LPIA - the lesson learned there was that in Intel space, the differences are quite a bit smaller than they would be in ARM.

Part of the reason is maturity. On x86 most distros target a wide range of hardware and are built for a relatively modest base target but can also detect and take advantage of CPU features at runtime (hwcap, multilib, multiarch etc). ARM distros on the other hand were traditionally targetting a specific hardware platform and didn't need to bother with such things, plus there seems to be a showstopper in the ARM EABI itself.

Quote & Reply |

The Following User Says Thank You to lma For This Useful Post:
attila77