Description of problem: The rpm build of the 2.4.21-15.0.3 Redhat kernel specifes a PIII processor under an i686 build config file. The linux-2.4 spec file copies the kernel-2.4.21-i686-hugemem.config to .config on i686 systems. Unfortunately, the processor specified in the config file is not an i686 but a PIII: # CONFIG_M686 is not set CONFIG_MPENTIUMIII=y Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kernel-source-2.4.21-15.0.3.EL.i386.rpm Additional Informatio: This occurs only under the hugemem config file, so I doubt it is configured this way on purpose. If it is done on purpose, I would be curious to learn why. -- Joel Griffiths
a pIII compiled kernel can use the prefetch instruction, which improves performance somewhat, this was done to offset some of the 4g/4g costs, with the assumption that all boxes with lots of ram are pIII or later anyway