Re: Linux support for Intel MMX CPU's

H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
20 Aug 1996 18:39:15 GMT


Followup to: <4vc0sf$ds5@news.ox.ac.uk>
By author: mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk (Malcolm Beattie)
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> Linus mentioned that task switching used tricks to be lazy about
> FPU state saving. I can't find the relevant code right now. Maybe
> somebody should check that these MMX instructions don't bypass
> whatever method Linux uses to trigger a forced save of FPU state.
>

If the kernel uses fsave/frestore it is OK; these instructions have
been explicitly amended to support either flavour of FPU state.

-hpa