Re: [patches] Possible PowerPC LIBC optimization

[Mark Mitchell <mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Steven Munroe wrote:

> The other end of the spectrum is to optimizing the entire library for a
> specific platform and use the dynamic linker dl_procinfo to select from
> multiple cpu-tuned libraries.
> <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/libc-alpha/2006-01/msg00094.html>.

Is it practical to have an intermediate state where most of the library
is generic, but high-performance routines (e.g., strcpy) are in a
separate libcpu.so that's chosen dynamically, either by the dynamic
linker, or by the system administrator setting symlinks at system
installation time?  Would having strcpy in a separate libcpu.so impact
performance negatively because there are now more dynamic libraries in
play?

I'm just trying to think about how to eliminate the cost (in terms of
build time, but, more importantly, validation) that comes with
multilibs.  I'm not at all confident that I'm going in a useful
direction; just poking about to see if there's anything down this path. :-)

-- 
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery
mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(650) 331-3385 x713