[Dev] SSE2 safe assumption on i686?

[Freemor]

On Mon, May 28, 2018 at 09:14:58PM -0400, Luke Shumaker wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I think I'm turning on SSE2 in CFLAGS for the libre/glib2-static
> package (CFLAGS+=" -msse2 -mfpmath=sse").
> 
> SSE2 was an extension to i686 introduced with the Pentium 4 in 2001
> (i686 itself was introduced with the Pentium Pro in 1995, which came
> between the Pentium 1 and 2).
> 
> SSE2 is guaranteed to be there on all x86_64 processors.
> 
> Is this a thing that we're OK doing?  Or do we want to support i686
> processors without SSE2?  The decision to continue i686 support was
> based largely on the number of i686 devices supported by LibreBoot; I
> don't believe LibreBoot supports any devices with pre-SSE2 processors.
> I would not be surprised if many packages already require SSE2 on i686
> (via inline assembly or intrinsics or somesuch; after ./configure
> discovers that SSE2 is supported on the local processor).
> 
> -- 
> Happy hacking,
> ~ Luke Shumaker
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Your reasoning seems sound to me. There are other projects devoted to
supporting old/ancient hardware, tho perhaps not as freedom respecting as
Parabola. 

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