[mythtv-users] Do you build mythtv from source, and why?

[Raymond Wagner]

On 3/29/2011 14:18, Frans Grotepass wrote:
> On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:42:56 -0400
> Raymond Wagner<raymond at wagnerrp.com>  wrote:
>
>> On 3/29/2011 10:27, Frans Grotepass wrote:
>>> On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 10:47:58 +1100
>>> Jean-Yves Avenard<jyavenard at gmail.com>   wrote:
>>>> As for compilation flags; in these days and age; I doubt you would
>>>> notice the difference performance wise following *tweaks* on the
>>>> compiler
>>> Is that so? The Atom that is often used in MythTV, a light weight
>>> processor with a rich instruction set with many extensions for
>>> multimedia processing should benefit by it. It is specifically in
>>> this day and age with more extensive instruction sets that sticking
>>> with just the i386 instruction set wastes the functionality.
>> The Atom is a piece of garbage.  When Intel designed the Atom, they
>> took a modern processor design, and then ripped out the last 15 years
>> of research into branch prediction and instruction dispatch, leaving
>> something that is every bit as cycle efficient as the old Netburst
>> architecture, but half the clock rate.
> Stress aside, I mentioned the Atom, since it is a light weight
> processor that is on the edge of or beyond its capabilities. So yes, I
> agree it is very light weight. The out of order execution is a sore
> miss, I agree.

The Atom processor is the perfect example of the wrong product at the 
right time.  Netbooks had just started coming out, and while some ran 
Linux, most people wanted to stick with Windows, which requires an x86 
processor.  The ULV mobile processors are considerably higher 
performance than the Atoms while in the same power envelope, but due to 
all the crap Intel ripped out of the design, the Atoms were low 
transistor count and dirt cheap to manufacture.  ARMs at the time had 
similar performance, with a small fraction of the power consumption, but 
since they couldn't run Windows, the Atom won out.  Windows 8 is 
expected out sometime next year with ARM support.  I don't expect the 
Atom line to survive much beyond that.