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Date:      Fri, 22 Sep 2000 09:58:28 -0500
From:      Glenn Johnson <gjohnson@nola.srrc.usda.gov>
To:        "S. David Pullara" <sdpullara@telus.net>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Intel cpu's and the -march switch
Message-ID:  <20000922095828.A4861@node1.cluster.srrc.usda.gov>
In-Reply-To: <20000922095644.A43762@indocyber.com>; from john@indocyber.com on Fri, Sep 22, 2000 at 09:56:44AM %2B0700
References:  <14794.8801.494001.718949@yuggoth.warpedspace.org> <20000921134425.A91788@node1.cluster.srrc.usda.gov> <20000922095644.A43762@indocyber.com>

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On Fri, Sep 22, 2000 at 09:56:44AM +0700, John Indra wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 21, 2000 at 01:44:25PM -0500, Glenn Johnson wrote:
>
> |You will not notice any perceptible performance improvement but
> |you may notice your kernel and/or programs acting strangely after
> |compiling with those options. I would recommend that you _not_ bother
> |with the -march or -mcpu options.
>
> How strange?

The keyword was _may_ in "may notice".  In any event it has been stated
very clearly on the mailing lists that if you use optimizations above
the default -O and something is not working correctly that you are on
your own.

> I've been having this /etc/make.conf entry on my personal workstation
> since the day FreeBSD 4.1-RELEASE (now, it's FreeBSD 4.1-STABLE) was
> out:
> 
> CFLAGS= -O6 -march=pentiumpro -funroll-loops -fstrength-reduce -ffast-math -fexpensive-optimizations -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe
> COPTFLAGS= -O6 -march=pentiumpro -funroll-loops -fstrength-reduce -ffast-math -fexpensive-optimizations -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe
> CXXFLAGS+= -fmemoize-lookups -fsave-memoized
> 
> This is not my production machine, only the machine I used daily as:
> web servers, proxy, firewall&NAT, mail server, DNS, and I use GIMP and
> XMMS a lot. In working hours, my baby is ``tortured'' really bad, a
> lot of request from approximately 40 other Windows based PC.  It's a
> Compaq Deskpro with Pentium III 500 MHz and 256 MB of RAM.
> 
> Days of uptime, without any unintentional reboots, and my feeling
> tells me that with those optimization, my machine runs faster :)))

The original question was with regards to the -march or -mcpu flags
specifically.  You have gone way beyond that in your optimizations.  The
-fomit-frame-pointer flag will definitely give a boost in performance
and should not cause any problems except with debugging.  I gave my
recommendation based on the specifics of the question but after all it
was just a recommendation.

-- 
Glenn Johnson
USDA, ARS, SRRC			 Phone: (504) 286-4252
New Orleans, LA 70124		e-mail: gjohnson@nola.srrc.usda.gov


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