Linux Kernel Starts Retiring Support for AMD's 30-Year-Old K5 CPUs (phoronix.com)
- Reference: 0183178354
- News link: https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/05/11/0315223/linux-kernel-starts-retiring-support-for-amds-30-year-old-k5-cpus
- Source link: https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-K5-CPUs
And now some i586 and i686 class processors are being removed, [3]reports Phoronix :
> Supporting those vintage GPUs without the Time Stamp Counter "TSC" instruction are becoming a burden... TSC-capable Intel Pentium processors and the likes will still be supported with this just being for TSC-less i586/i686 CPUs. Among the CPUs impacted by [4]this latest change is the AMD K5 as well as various Cyrix processor models. The K5 was AMD's first entirely in-house designed processor that was first introduced in 1996 to counter the Intel Pentium CPU.
TSC "support can now be assumed as a boot requirement for modern Linux," the article points out, which will allow the removal of various non-TSC code paths from the Linux kernel's x86 code.
Tom's Hardware remembers the K5 " [5]wasn't a very popular processor as it arrived late, then offered lackluster performance in the competitive environment it joined."
> Launch SKUs in 1996 were limited to clocks from 75 MHz to 133 MHz, and, due to being late, Intel's Pentium line was already faster. AMD still managed to get an edge on the [6]Cyrix 6x86 , though.
[1] https://linux.slashdot.org/story/26/04/06/0358212/linux-finally-starts-removing-support-for-intels-37-year-old-i486-processor
[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-Elan-Linux-Driver-Removal
[3] https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-K5-CPUs
[4] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip.git/commit/?h=x86/cpu&id=dbafa16ec2b6be40055db181c99f2529b20dd951
[5] https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/amds-legendary-k5-its-first-independently-designed-processor-is-being-removed-from-the-linux-kernel-4-3-million-transistor-chip-gets-the-axe-because-it-lacks-time-stamp-counter-tsc-support-making-it-a-coding-burden
[6] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclocking-guide,15-12.html
Just go 64 bit only at this point (Score:2)
Linux users can never complain about Windows 11 ever again now.
Re:Just go 64 bit only at this point (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardly. Windows 11 depreciated perfectly viable hardware. On the flip side trying to get a modern Linux distribution running on a K5 would be like a trip to the dentist. Actually you could do both because your system probably won't have finished booting by the time your dentist is done with your root canal ;-)
There's a big difference between depreciating a 8 year old CPU and a 37 year old CPU.
Re: (Score:3)
> There's a big difference between depreciating a 8 year old CPU and a 37 year old CPU.
The Windows fanbois are not rational.
Re: (Score:1)
I would guess most K5 computers that are still in use (and actively updated with new kernels) are probably not desktop computers, and don't run a normal linux distribution. Think things like C&C machines and ATMs. Linux runs just fine on many many computers that would struggle to run Ubuntu.
Re: (Score:2)
How about a modern kernel on a 486? [1]https://github.com/Sharktastic... [github.com]
[1] https://github.com/SharktasticA/SHORK-486
Re: (Score:3)
Why? 30 year old hardware will not be supported in future Linux versions. The current versions will be supported for a while. But those versions will be available for download on mirrors for even longer. Finally if someone wants to fork and support their own branch, they can.
alternatively (Score:3)
The K5 was a fantastic budget CPU. It slid rather neatly between 486 and P5 performance, outperforming the highest end 486 units while being cheaper, and for most non multimedia home/desktop PC use of the day did not offer an experience that suffered much vs Pentium machines.
IMHO it was good chip it was not marked to the right segment by AMD, and the Wintel cartel also was in place that kept it out of the market segment where it needed to be anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. I had one and I was quite satisfied with it. No idea why they feel the need to portray it as a near-failure.
Re: (Score:1)
It was economically a near-failure, and it was a commercial product, so that's how you measure its level of success.
They were late bringing it to market, so the performance was underwhelming, which is why it failed in the market. Few people will buy an underdog without a clear price advantage.
The K6 had that clear price advantage, and it and its variants were successful in the market. They sold a lot of units. It was very common to find them in laptops because they were cheap and relatively power efficient,
Re: (Score:2)
The K6-2+ and K6-3+ with their huge caches really changed the landscape of Super Socket 7.
It was ever so slightly too little, too late. Super Socket 7 lived about three years longer than it should have, but I saved a ton of money building computers on that platform.
DIY PC (Score:2)
My very first PC build was a 486 built out of pulled parts from the computer lab where I worked. My first real DIY build was a K62-300 with a Matrox G200 video card. Ran every bit as good as my friend's P2 at half the price.
Pare down the bloat (Score:2)
Surely, the kernel could benefit from a concerted effort to pare down support for devices that are 30+ years past their prime and focus more on chasing bugs?
Re: Pare down the bloat (Score:1)
I think everything over 10 or 15 years should be ripped out of the current kernel to keep the bloat down, if someone has older hardware they can run an older version of the kernel or find an older distro version, there are old versions still available for download
Re: Pare down the bloat (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a bit short sighted. While a 37 year old CPU is no longer useful, 10-15 year old hardware is not only perfectly viable but actually widely and actively used. I myself am running a modern up to date Linux on a 14 year old CPU with adequate performance and have zero intention to change it unless something physically breaks in the short term.
There's no reason to depreciate hardware unless a specific feature is absent (maybe things will change if we mandate TPMs - but right now that is optional for every Linux distro)
Re: (Score:2)
This there decision needs to reflect the actual support costs. Right now x86-64v2 is probably the least common denominator in terms of not requiring a lot of special hoops to support. Maybe you could argue x86-64v1 stuff is still viable but I'd counter you have a lot of instruction set inconsistency there in those products and from a performance and efficiency perspective it probably does not make sense to be using them as daily drivers of contemporary software.
Re: (Score:2)
You are overlooking what is used in the industrial field.
Re: (Score:2)
Not really. The industrial field isnt trying to use the latest kernels or software. They are trying to run some LTS release that does support their hardware and they don't want software changes other than fixes for all the same reasons they don't want to implement hardware changes.
I am not suggesting still supported LTS releases should dump old hardware. However there is no reason anyone realistically should be spending time trying to get first gen althon64s supported on Linux 7.0. There may be no-reaso
Re: Pare down the bloat (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm running Linux on an old Core i7 960 (upgraded from a 920) that I built 18 years ago. It's my daily driver and works just fine as long as I don't want to play games on it. I was looking to replace it this year but with the cost of everything going crazy it looks like I'll keep chugging along with it for the next few years.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. My firewall / fileserver is on an 18 year old Phenom II 4-core with 32GB RAM and there is no need to replace it. The only thing that broke about 8 years ago was the PSU. Replaced that and it is good fore the foreseeable future.
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Same thing here. My firewall/router is a core 2 duo box that set me back $35. I would like to replace it but it keeps chugging along without complaint.
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Then you do not understand how long some industrial equipment runs. "Older kernel" is only a solution if it gets maintenance. You do want that MRI machine taking your pictures to run on a maintained kernel, do you?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> You do want that MRI machine taking your pictures to run on a maintained kernel, do you?
That would be nice, but odds are it runs an unmaintained version of Windows, and there is no upgrade path — neither the drivers nor the software have been updated for a newer version. I've been spending a lot of time in hospitals and dentists' offices lately and virtually everything runs on Windows.
Re: Pare down the bloat (Score:2)
What MRI machine is getting kernel updates, at least in the US? Outside of the rare kernel bug that actually affects the MRI functionality, are any?
Re: (Score:2)
A stock kernel on an MRI machine?
No, I don't want that level of DIY on any equipment that is critical to anything.
Almost nobody runs stock kernels. Stock kernels are used by distributions to build their own kernels.
That MRI machine is running on a 1.2 kernel. Maybe 2.0. It's separated from the hospital network by a firewall.
If the MRI machine is getting attacked then a LOT has gone wrong already.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, but what a first world, rich baby comment!
Not all world can afford new computers and computers with 15 years are perfectly good... sure, you can't play top games there, but still are great for working, web, servers, NAS, home automation, etc. In many countries, you use what you can get and old distros mean most of the time lack of updates and security issues.
386, 486, k5, pentium (1, the first) are now too old and too slow, any RPi, arm board or very old computer is faster, cheaper to run and easier
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
> Surely, the kernel could benefit from a concerted effort to pare down support for devices that are 30+ years past their prime and focus more on chasing bugs?
These devices are being removed now because supporting them is becoming difficult now. There was no need to remove them for that reason before. There is a need to remove them for that reason now. That's why it's happening now. HTH, HAND.
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect that it depends on how strongly or weakly the 'bloat' is connected to other things; and what supporting them involves.
Something like not having TSC (which itself comes in several variants depending on whether it's from the era where you actually had 'a' CPU that just ran at a speed, or if it's one of the ones that tries to compensate for the complications of variable clocks and multiple cores) presumably comes up in a variety of nasty places related to the bad things that happen when things are
Welp, over to NetBSD (Score:1)
Welp, time to go over to NetBSD.
what is Debian going to do (Score:2)
When they run out of Toy Story characters to name their releases after???
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously? That is not happening soon.
There is a Toy Story 5 next month.
Damn, I'm old (Score:2)
I had K5 and Cyrix 6x86, but I quite supporting them about 30 years ago.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm still a bit miffed after buying a 6x86 and then Quake being released later in the year. It ran terrible. [1]https://liam-on-linux.livejour... [livejournal.com]
[1] https://liam-on-linux.livejournal.com/49259.html
Re: (Score:2)
The FPU on the Cyrix 6x86 chips was definitely their weak point. I had one and it struggled to play a MP3 while multitasking. On the other hand, the AMD K6-2/3 chips could play an MP3 in the background and it barely affected what I was doing. For non-FPU heavy tasks though the 6x86 was certainly competitive with the Pentium chips and was a good alternative for things like office work.
Re: (Score:2)
I remember building a bunch of Cyrix boxes for in-house use at my second job out of uni. It was an interesting time for x86-compatible processors, it seemed like the x86-compatible ecosystem was going to expand with a whole bunch of manufacturers getting in on it, some with very different approaches (remember Transmeta?). Didn't really work out that way though.
Cyrix is tied to that pinball 2000 (Score:2)
Cyrix is tied to that pinball 2000
Re: Damn, I'm old (Score:2)
Cyrix was the shit back then
Re: (Score:3)
The first processor maker to print "Fan/Heatsink Required" on their processors.
Cyrix chips (including original Cyrix, Centaur, and VIA) were an amazing value and bargain.
Cyrix P200+ was my first CPU. (Score:2)
It was awesome. I even got this special grafics card calles Matrox Mystique which had this very special function: It would specifically support enhanced gaming(!). A brand new concept, can you imagine?
Re: (Score:2)
I had 3dfx Voodoo cards and S3 ViRGE along with other commercial video card failures back then, heheh.
Re: (Score:2)
> I had K5 and Cyrix 6x86, but I quite supporting them about 30 years ago.
Child, I had a Cyrix math co-processor for my 286 computer.
Speaking of "old", did you know that there was an 80186 microprocessor? The company I worked for made its own custom controller board using that chip. I had thought it was only ever used as an embedded processor, but just recently I learned that there was at least one PC produced that used a 186.
Re: (Score:3)
> Speaking of "old", did you know that there was an 80186 microprocessor? The company I worked for made its own custom controller board using that chip. I had thought it was only ever used as an embedded processor, but just recently I learned that there was at least one PC produced that used a 186.
Research Machines built weird PCs in the 80s based around the 186. It was almost PC compatible but had to have its own special versions of DOS and Windows 2. Unfortunately Research Machines had some kind of lock on the UK education sector, so schools that weren't still using BBC Micros or Acorn Archimedes machines, had these strange 90% IBM-compatible abominations. (Just looked it up, it was called the "RM Nimbus")
That's okay Linux, I retired you in 1998. (Score:1)
I switched from Linux (I was a Slackware / SLS guy first) in 1998 to BSD. Rewarding decision in retrospect: zero regrets. When changes are made these days, why does it always feel political with Linux and technical with BSD ?