Mesa Considers Raising CPU Support Baseline

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Mesa Considers Raising CPU Support Baseline

Mesa developers are currently discussing the raising of the default compiler baseline for Mesa drivers moving forward, which would raise the base CPU requirements for these open-source Mesa drivers unless overriding the compiler flags. However, all but the very oldest systems would be negatively impacted...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Mesa-2021-CPU-Baseline

[curfew]

However, all but the very oldest systems would be negatively impacted.

No, the impact should be very positive for all but the very oldest systems.

[NateHubbard]

This doesn't seem like too big of a deal, but I'm sure someone with ancient hardware will still have a problem with it.

[ezst036]

................ with ancient hardware..............

A deeply useless phrase.

There's a reason these sorts of proposals can become controversial. The hardware people are defending isn't ancient.

[NateHubbard]

A deeply useless phrase.

There's a reason these sorts of proposals can become controversial. The hardware people are defending isn't ancient.

According to this article, it is. At least in my opinion.

[gQuigs]

From the ticket, It seems this really only is a bump for 32-bit builds - 64 bit already has sse2.

[curfew]

This doesn't seem like too big of a deal, but I'm sure someone with ancient hardware will still have a problem with it.

Then change the configuration back to "old default" and recompile. It's hard to understand what's the problem when it's only about toggling some compilation flags on or off. It doesn't change the realized level of hardware support in any way.

I guess it could have something to do with what Mesa sort of guarantees to be stable. If they start shipping more modern compilation configuration as the default, they are at least implying that it will be safe to compile the code with those settings. Which will have a direct impact on downstream if problems arise.

In the corporate world there are also many people who just don't want to see their configuration change. Either they have to update their own build scripts to toggle this same flags with the reversed defaults, or they have to start testing their platforms with the new defaults.

[Mani]

Compilers and parsers are among the programs I'd suspect to gain quite a bit of performance from vectorisation. A few benchmarks of different Mesa builds, especially in the CPU bound scenarios, on modern hardware including AVX would be very interesting

[chromer]

Why someone in 2021 should still use hardware of 20 years ago ?

[Tumm]

From the ticket, It seems this really only is a bump for 32-bit builds - 64 bit already has sse2.

Well that makes sense since SSE2 is mandatory for x64