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Linux 4.17 Kernel Offers Better Intel Power-Savings While Dropping Old CPUs (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Linus Torvalds has released Linux 4.17-rc1. This kernel comes with a significant amount of new capabilities as outlined by the Linux 4.17 feature overview. Among the new features are AMDGPU WattMan support, Intel HDCP support, Vega 12 GPU enablement, NVIDIA Xavier SoC support, removal of obsolete CPU architectures, and even better support for the original Macintosh PowerBook 100 series. Phoronix testing has also revealed measurable power savings improvements and better power efficiency on Intel hardware. The kernel is expected to be stabilized by June.
They were dropped because there are no developers to maintain the code, If you want to pick up the slack, I'm sure the community will be more then willing to rummage through their junk-piles to send you testing hardware
I'm curious what's considered an "obsolete CPU architecture" if a Powerbook 100 is still supported.
Obsolete = Nobody is stepping up to maintain the code.
Obviously someone still cares about the Powerbook 100 enough to do the maintenance work.
Proprietary software drops support when they no longer care. Open source drops support when you no longer care.
Things like Unicore, Hexagon, S+core, OpenRISC, M32R, Cris i.e. stuff most people didn't even heard about.
The long version at (as always) excellent LWN:
https://lwn.net/Articles/74807... and
https://lwn.net/Articles/74929...
:wq
What kind of mental gymnastics do you have to go through to keep 68000 but drop the much newer Blackfin DSP
No mental gymnastics required. You just need a developer willing to support the 68k, and not have a developer for the Blackfin.
The 68k is kind of baseline for that tree, and relatively simple even for people without specialized knowledge, so it may stick around for a while. It's harder to maintain more complex architectures where you need instruction order and cache management to think about as well.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Typically old hardware isn't dropped if we know someone is using it. Of course there are exceptions when a stack gets a major rewrite. If there is discussion about dropping support for something you use, just let us know on lkml.
I'm curious what's considered an "obsolete CPU architecture" if a Powerbook 100 is still supported.
The full list of dropped CPUs is Blackfin, CRIS, FRV, M32R, Metag, MN10300, Score, and Tile. Also under consideration are Unicore32 and Hexagon, but they are not officially gone yet. Apparently this change removes about half a million lines of code, a substantial reduction in complexity. I had never heard of any of these before and I suspect most other people haven't either, so I don't think they will be missed.
If you're an audio engineer, the Blackfin is used by the legendary Bricasti Model 7 (actually, the M7 uses six Blackfin processors). It's also used in devices like the DR-70D. I'm actually surprised they are dropping support for it.
... these days. Even before flakey audio and bluetooth management.
Seriously. Every other OS get's an easy 8 hours out of todays regular portable hardware, only Linux barely scrapes 4 hours. I'm a big Linux and FOSS fan but this is a problem that is really annoying and needs fixing ASAP. Windows, macOS and even Chrome have been on top of this for the better part of a decade and the Linux kernel still wastes gobs of energy. Unacceptable. This update is a step in the right direction. I hope it continues that way. Thumbs up for the kernel crew.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
things like Power4, Blackfin, M32R etc.
Which are all newer than the motorola 68000 in the powerbook 100.
"Newer" has nothing to do with "less obsolete". There is a link in TFA, describing eight dropped architectures as "without active users". POWER4 was dropped because POWER4 support is broken since two years already and no fix or rework available (and apparently no urge to fix it).
So yes, a newer architecture can be obsolete when an older one is still alive and kicking.