Change in system requirements (AVX)

[Kris_88]

According to this announcement viewtopic.php?f=1&t=31399&p=253649#p253649
"With the next development release (33.3.0) we will be changing Pale Moon's system requirements.
Starting that version, all 64-bit release versions will require at least the AVX instruction set in the CPU."

If I understand correctly, this motherboard will not be supported:
Asrock Q1900-ITX
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Q1900-ITX/index.asp

Or, for example, AMD Athlon 2 X4 630 CPU will not be supported either, although Windows 10 works fine on it. You can even make Windows 11 work, if you want. But Pale Moon x64 will not work.

There are also laptops without AVX support that are still in use...

In general, I am somewhat surprised by the desire of the Pale Moon developers to "get ahead of the game" (since XP support was cut). Yes, it would be justified if it was the price of some other advantage. However, I do not see such an advantage. You may say "XUL extensions"? But it has been stated many times that old extensions may or may not work, and no one guarantees anything and does not take responsibility.

In short, it looks like the developers themselves are killing this project...

[Pentium4User]

Yes, the Athlon 2 X4 630 doesn't have AVX and won't be supported.
Some cheap Intel Celeron are also unsupported because Intel doesn't want to ship them with AVX.
I have such a machine.

As I said before, I might volunteer to provide SSE2 Linux builds for those users.

[suzyne]

I feel like both sides of this discussion was comprehensively covered in a previous thread (or two).

Hasn't the window of time to change the minds of the @moonchild and the rest of the team well and truly passed? I guess expressing frustration at the new requirements makes for a healthy community, but is the whole debate going to be resuscitated when it was quite clear that a definitive decision has been made months ago?

[Kris_88]

I feel like both sides of this discussion was comprehensively covered in a previous thread (or two).

Maybe this or similar issues have already been discussed, but I missed it on the forum. In any case, no one can demand that I read all the topics on the forum in detail. And I have the right to express my opinion, regardless of whether it will lead to any changes in the developers' policy.

[Pentium4User]

Please tell which systems you have, so other people can maybe create the builds you need - like it exists with the AVX/AVX2 builds today.

[RealityRipple]

It was literally the biggest discussion this year so far: https://forum.palemoon.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=30909.

[suzyne]

In any case, no one can demand that I read all the topics on the forum in detail.

It was quite a lengthy discussion, with 274 comments that spanned 4 weeks, so it is a shame that you couldn't take part, as it was interesting and important.

I didn't mean to imply that you should be aware of every forum thread, but it really was quite epic and ongoing, even so, I understand that having an extended break from online spaces happens, and that news can be missed.

Demand wasn't my intention.

[Kris_88]

Please tell which systems you have, so other people can maybe create the builds you need - like it exists with the AVX/AVX2 builds today.

Pentium4User, thank you.
I am currently using the mentioned Asrock motherboard with Windows 8.1 pro. In fact, I have several different computers and I will find a solution for myself without third-party builds.

But the value of this project is greatly reduced by this approach...
There is neither need nor logic in the new requirements.

[Pentium4User]

Please tell which systems you have, so other people can maybe create the builds you need - like it exists with the AVX/AVX2 builds today.

Pentium4User, thank you.
I am currently using the mentioned Asrock motherboard with Windows 8.1 pro. In fact, I have several different computers and I will find a solution for myself without third-party builds.

You can build them on your own machine if needed.

But the value of this project is greatly reduced by this approach...
There is neither need nor logic in the new requirements.

The reason is rather easy: AVX/AVX2 provides some performance benefits and many users here have processors that support AVX.

[Kris_88]

The reason is rather easy: AVX/AVX2 provides some performance benefits and many users here have processors that support AVX.

I have no doubt that many people use computers without AVX support and Pale Moon will not work on them.

[Night Wing]

Since my curiosity was piqued, I took a look at the requirements for my 14", HP dv4-5113cl laptop computer which is my oldest laptop since it came with 64 bit Windows 7 Home Premium. With an Intel i5 processor and a processor speed of 2.50 and 16 GB of memory, it has been a good laptop for me when I travel away from my home.

After looking at the Troubleshooting info, it will support SSE2 and AVX.

Off-topic:
Since it was a computer I bought used on eBay, I was curious to see when it was manufactured. Since the 4th, 5th and 6th numbers in the serial number denote the year and week it was made. Those numbers are 223. Which means it was built in 2012 in the 23 third week which would be April of 2012.

And it now runs 64 bit MX Linux 23.3 (Libretto) Xfce with 64 bit linux Pale Moon 33.2.1 along with linux Waterfox G6.0.17 and linux Firefox (128.0.2).

[Pentium4User]

The affected machines are all older than AMD Bulldozer (2012) or Intel 2nd Generation.
And some low-power Celeron (even new ones) and Atom are affected. Those users exist, but I assume the vast majority of users has machines that support AVX.

[Kris_88]

It looks like this processor doesn't support AVX either. It's a relatively new product, Q4 2019.
So what energy-efficient CPU will Pale Moon run on?

Intel® Pentium® Silver J5040
Instruction Set Extensions - Intel® SSE4.2
Launch Date - Q4'19

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... 0-ghz.html

https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J5040-ITX/

[Pentium4User]

The Celeron/Pentium J series lacks AVX - I don't know the exact reason for that, although other software vendors also made AVX mandatory and those CPU owners were understandable unhappy.

I think there is a need for SSE2 builds, so those users can switch to them.

[Kris_88]

In my opinion, it is not reasonable for a regular browser to have stricter hardware requirements than other browsers and common operating systems.

[Pentium4User]

In my opinion, it is not reasonable for a regular browser to have stricter hardware requirements than other browsers and common operating systems.

Windows 11 will be much more restrictive - it won't officially run on your 7th Gen Intel.

[Kris_88]

At least they write "Windows 11 ready" here (though I don't plan to upgrade to Windows 11 anytime soon). But for Pale Moon this hardware won't be suitable if AVX support is required.
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J5040-ITX/

[athenian200]

At least they write "Windows 11 ready" here (though I don't plan to upgrade to Windows 11 anytime soon). But for Pale Moon this hardware won't be suitable if AVX support is required.
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J5040-ITX/

That hardware is from 2019, about 5 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracemont ... hitecture)

If you're interested in low-power architectures, Gracemont CPUs came out last year. Intel has only recently started having AVX on the kind of low-power architectures you're talking about here, unfortunately. Their 14nm process was getting long in the tooth, and was aging badly, with PCI-E 3.0 being the best they could do for almost a decade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_%2 ... tecture%29

Look at the ancient Jaguar microarchitecture by comparison. This was a low-power CPU from mid-2013, pretty much targeting the same kind of power budget as those low-power Intel CPUs you linked. They were used in game consoles and other embedded applications. Intel was roundly beaten in the embedded market by both ARM and AMD, which is why you don't really see as many low-power CPUs from Intel these days, and the few you were seeing were based on obsolete technology.

AMD has not produced a CPU without AVX in ages. Intel has only done so for low-power CPUs due to being stuck on 14nm for far too long. I'm a fan of Intel myself, but even I have to admit they dropped the ball here and have been holding progress back for almost two decades now by producing low-power CPUs on an obsolete process node.

I mean, once again, I apologize to anyone using Pale Moon on old, underpowered Intel SoCs, but you got ripped off, and I'm sorry Intel got you to buy something new that isn't any better than used hardware, basically scrap silicon. You'll be feeling a lot of pain in the next few years.

Realistically, though, more Pale Moon users concerned with the AVX issue are on older hardware, not on embedded Intel systems. If anything, the danger Pale Moon faces in the future is that more and more Windows users will be running ARM, and we aren't really optimized for that at all.

[Nuck-TH]

Sigh, i already said(iirc even not once) that i will swap my AVX build with SSE2 one. So any panic is completely uncalled for.

[Moonchild]

Not sure how you missed the big thread, and also didn't see the previous announcement where I explained in more detail what was planned.

Bottom line is there will be options once this change is made in the form of community builds, but the main releases will be AVX.

We simply can't get stuck on 12-14+ year old architectures when the web demands more and more power every month to do the same thing. That was never one of our goals (as I have stated many, many, many times). The fact that Intel decided not to ship AVX in certain (ultra-)low power CPUs/SoCs is unfortunate but that kind of outlier really can't be used as a criterion. If you run special hardware, you need special builds. Simple as that.