作者: Cineut
2012-12-18 11:12:53
Linus Torvalds, the father of Linux kernel, (actually Ingo Molnar) has pulled the plugs on Intel's 386 processors.
i386, as it is commonly called, was a 32-bit microprocessor introduced by Intel in 1985. The first versions had 275,000 transistors and were used as the central processing unit (CPU) of many workstations and high-end personal computers of the time.
Intel continued to manufacture these chips until 2006 when they announced that 80386 production would stop at the end of September 2007.
Brutally killing the support for these 'obsolete' chips Ingo Molnar wrote:
Pull "Nuke 386-DX/SX support" from Ingo Molnar:
"This tree removes ancient-386-CPUs support and thus zaps quite a bit of complexity:
24 files changed, 56 insertions(+), 425 deletions(-)
... which complexity has plagued us with extra work whenever we wanted to change SMP primitives, for years.
What does it mean?
As Molnar says:
Unfortunately there's a nostalgic cost: your old original 386 DX33 system from early 1991 won't be able to boot modern Linux kernels anymore. Sniff."
Linus did not show any remorse and plainly stated: "I'm not sentimental. Good riddance."