[ale] multi processing?

[dana at slothlovechunk.org (Dana Powers)]

The main distinction in the intel line is between the 286 and the 386.
Before the 386, the x86 chips did not have effective memory addressing
support to allow a true multi-tasking OS like linux. What you refer to as
'Multi-processing' is managed by the OS itself, and specifically the
scheduler process, which is software. So in this case, its always software
processing. I am not aware of a significant change in the intel pentium
chips, but that being said, you will almost always see performance gains in
various areas if you recompile your software for your particular
processor/architecture . This is especially true of the kernel. Either way,
most default linux kernels expose essentially the same functionality to
userland programs regardless of what architecture they are optimized for. I
believe that MS operating systems were not entirely multi-tasking until
after the pentium was released, however; but Im not an ms guru, so this
could totally be off.

hth
dpk

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Turner" <artic_knight at yahoo.com>
To: ale at ale.org
To: <ale at ale.org>
Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 9:10 PM
Subject: [ale] multi processing?


> hey, i was curious, ive read how before the pentium there was no
> multiprocessing other than what software could manage, so my question is,
> if i compile linux for a 386 and i run it on a pentium, does it take
> advantage of multiprocessing? or just run the software processing?
>
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