Intel Core 2 'Penryn' and Linux

An anonymous reader writes "Linux Hardware has posted a look at the new Intel "Penryn" processor and how the new processor will work with Linux. Intel recently released the new "Penryn" Core 2 processor with many new features. So what are these features and how will they equate into benefits to Linux users? The article covers all the high points of the new "Penryn" core and talks to a couple Linux projects about end-user performance of the chip."

Comments

Perspective

[explosivejared]

"There are some new instructions that could be more convenient to use in some special cases (like the new pmin/pmax instructions). But these will have no real performance benefit."

"So we do not plan on adding SSE4 optimizations. We may use SSE4 instructions in the future for convenience once SSE4 has become really widely supported. But I personally don't see that anytime soon..."

I think that puts the hype over penryn into perspective. There are some nice improvements energy leaks and such, but it's nothing revolutionary.

Re:If video encoding/decoding is the bottleneck...

[644bd346996]

The place for hardware decoders is on the graphics card. Hence the reason why Linux needs to use the CPU.

More Useless Options

[hattable]

"So we do not plan on adding SSE4 optimizations. We may use SSE4 instructions in the future for convenience once SSE4 has become really widely supported. But I personally don't see that anytime soon..."

This just reminds me of CONFIG_ACPI_SLEEP. About 2 times a month I am staring at this option wondering if I will ever get to use it. Some things just are not worth developer time to implement.

Re:If Intel had a better bus then they would not n

[Predius]

Unless the bus and ram start running faster than the cpu, cache will have place in the design. And when die space is as cheap as it is for Intel now, why NOT use it for more cache?