"In the x86 architecture we have various complicated hardware emulation
facilities on x86-32 to support ancient 32-bit CPUs that very very few
people are using with modern kernels. This compatibility glue is sometimes
even causing problems that people spend time to resolve, which time could
be spent on other things.
As Linus recently remarked:
> I really get the feeling that it's time to leave i486 support behind.
> There's zero real reason for anybody to waste one second of
> development effort on this kind of issue.
This series increases minimum kernel support features to include TSC and
CX8 (CMPXCHG8B) hardware support, which removes 486 (and derivatives) support
and early-586 (and derivatives) support.
Doing this allows the removal of a fair amount of code:
"In the x86 architecture we have various complicated hardware emulation facilities on x86-32 to support ancient 32-bit CPUs that very very few people are using with modern kernels. This compatibility glue is sometimes even causing problems that people spend time to resolve, which time could be spent on other things.
As Linus recently remarked:
> I really get the feeling that it's time to leave i486 support behind. > There's zero real reason for anybody to waste one second of > development effort on this kind of issue.
This series increases minimum kernel support features to include TSC and CX8 (CMPXCHG8B) hardware support, which removes 486 (and derivatives) support and early-586 (and derivatives) support.
Doing this allows the removal of a fair amount of code:
80 files changed, 38 insertions(+), 14104 deletions(-)
Much of which is the math-emu/ library - but even without math-emu, the simplification is substantial:"
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20250425084216.3913608-1-mingo@...