From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on aws-us-west-2-korg-lkml-1.web.codeaurora.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-5.2 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,MAILING_LIST_MULTI,SPF_HELO_NONE,SPF_PASS, USER_AGENT_SANE_1 autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.0 Received: from mail.kernel.org (mail.kernel.org [198.145.29.99]) by smtp.lore.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1462EC433DB for ; Thu, 4 Feb 2021 21:03:13 +0000 (UTC) Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [23.128.96.18]) by mail.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B4D8264F10 for ; Thu, 4 Feb 2021 21:03:12 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S230120AbhBDVCp (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Feb 2021 16:02:45 -0500 Received: from jabberwock.ucw.cz ([46.255.230.98]:58916 "EHLO jabberwock.ucw.cz" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S230110AbhBDVCj (ORCPT ); Thu, 4 Feb 2021 16:02:39 -0500 Received: by jabberwock.ucw.cz (Postfix, from userid 1017) id 864111C0B77; Thu, 4 Feb 2021 22:01:41 +0100 (CET) Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2021 22:01:41 +0100 From: Pavel Machek To: Andy Shevchenko Cc: David Laight , Arnd Bergmann , Willy Tarreau , Linux ARM , Linux Kernel Mailing List , Krzysztof Adamski , Oleksij Rempel , Baruch Siach , Russell King - ARM Linux , Daniel Tang , Uwe =?iso-8859-1?Q?Kleine-K=F6nig?= , Jamie Iles , Barry Song , Viresh Kumar , Linus Walleij , Jonas Jensen , Marc Gonzalez , Hartley Sweeten , Lubomir Rintel , Neil Armstrong , Shawn Guo , Alex Elder , Alexander Shiyan , Koen Vandeputte , Hans Ulli Kroll , Vladimir Zapolskiy , Wei Xu , Steven Rostedt , Yoshinori Sato , Mark Salter , Michael Ellerman , Geert Uytterhoeven , Thomas Bogendoerfer Subject: Re: Old platforms: bring out your dead Message-ID: <20210204210140.GB7529@amd> References: <20210109055645.GA2009@1wt.eu> <6fb7e3f5035d44fab9801001f1811b59@AcuMS.aculab.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="rS8CxjVDS/+yyDmU" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.23 (2014-03-12) Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org --rS8CxjVDS/+yyDmU Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi! > > > I think there were 486s with up to 256MB, which would still qualify a= s barely > > > usable for a minimal desktop, or as comfortable for a deeply embedded > > > system. The main limit was apparently the cacheable RAM, which is lim= ited > > > by the amount of L2 cache -- you needed a rare 1MB of external L2-cac= he to > > > have 256MB of cached RAM, while more common 256KB of cache would > > > be good for 64MB. Vortex86SX has no FPU or L2 cache at all, but suppo= rts > > > 256MB of DDR2. > > > > There are also some newer (well less than 30 year old) cpus that are >=20 > (less than 10 years actually) >=20 > > basically 486 but have a few extra instructions - probably just cpuid > > and (IIRC) rdtsc. > > Designed for low power embedded use they won't ever have been suitable > > for a desktop - but are probably fast enough for some uses. > > I'm not sure how much keeping 486 support actually costs, 386 was a > > PITA - but the 486 fixed most of those issues. >=20 > Right, we have "last of mohicans" (to date) Intel Quark family of CPUs > (486 core + few i586 features). > This is for the embedded world and probably not for powerful use. We have open-hardware implementation for 486, AFAICT, thanks to MISTer project. I'm not aware of open 586 core. Being able to run recent Linux on open hardware sounds fun. Pavel --=20 http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek --rS8CxjVDS/+yyDmU Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" Content-Description: Digital signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 iEYEARECAAYFAmAcYLQACgkQMOfwapXb+vInqACgkjLbN2uUqZLXo2W9Cd3FXVon dyoAoIhEHuOXjjaQz6PaPWREnmtzlUD9 =iKmM -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --rS8CxjVDS/+yyDmU--