LSB1.1: /proc/cpuinfo

Stuart Anderson anderson at metrolink.com
Fri Jan 4 08:34:01 PST 2002


On Fri, 4 Jan 2002, Alan Cox wrote:

> > I did read the app notes pertaining to this, and felt that it was an excessive
> > burdon on the application considering the kernel had already done the work.
>
> The things that actually matter are like 10 lines of GNU C with a little
> __asm__ block. The code is out there in GPL form and its shorter than
> parsing /proc

If you are refering to the code in arch/i386/kernel/setup.c, the code that
determines the features is spread over several hundred lines of code which
makes decisions based on model info and various erratta.

If an application included this directly into itself, then it wouldn't be able
to handle new CPU models, erratta, etc. By letting the kernel handle it, it
will always get the best possible info.


                                Stuart

Stuart R. Anderson                               anderson at metrolink.com

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