[Ksummit-2012-discuss] [ATTEND] <ding> "Bring out your dead" <ding>...

[Paul E. McKenney]

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 08:03:34PM -0400, Paul Gortmaker wrote:

[ . . . ]

> Linus mentioned that perhaps someday we might be able to remove EISA as
> well.  It seems to make sense to me too, given that EISA (at least in
> x86) was largely confined to 486 and 586 (sub-200MHz) server machines,
> and largely all crushed out of existence by PCI around 1996.  But some
> non-x86 boxes may rely on EISA -- such as some Alpha boxes, I think.
> 
> What about Alpha?   It was effectively killed 10+ years ago by Compaq.
> I suspect most of the Alpha machines still hiding in basements here and
> there are EV5/EV6 desktops with Pentium-3 class performance.  Sure
> there were faster machines made in the post Compaq takeover era, but
> given that they could be in excess of $1,000,000 -- I'll guess that the
> number hiding in basements is low.  Are Alpha machines being actively
> used?  I don't know.  Also worth investigating.  Not so we can remove
> it tomorrow, but even the most ardent supporter would have to admit
> that _someday_ removal will make sense.  Lets discuss the EISA
> dependency (if it exists) and set a ballpark on when that someday just
> might be.  Then we can warn people well in advance.

I suggested dropping Alpha awhile back and got this URL in response:

	http://www.alphalinux.org/wiki/index.php/User:Armin76/HW_list

That said, I believe that Alpha-only bugs are accumulating, as there
are situations where only Alpha needs something like rcu_dereference()
and all other architectures are happy with ACCESS_ONCE().

							Thanx, Paul