[OpenIndiana-discuss] The Register today

[Judah Richardson]

On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 5:28 PM Mike Carroll <mdcarroll6 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I can understand maintaining it's support for SPARC, though I would like
> to see more work on the new OpenPower Foundation Processors (that have at
> least SOME similarity in the SMT4 and SMT8).

Is any distribution except Debian, Ubuntu, IBM Linux(ONE?), and AIX
providing significant support for these? Of course, I suppose in the case
of Linux once the kernel supports the ISA all you have to worry about are
package builds.

These seem affordable

Link? AFAIK the only consumer-facing retail available POWER systems are
from Raptor Systems, and even the entry level desktops, CPUs and
motherboards are incredibly expensive relative to comparable x86-64
offerings and even compared to something like an M1 Mini.

at the moment too.
>
> ________________________________
> From: Chris <oidev at sunos.info>
> Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2021 3:19 PM
> To: Discussion list for OpenIndiana <openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org>
> Cc: Volker A. Brandt <vab at bb-c.de>
> Subject: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] The Register today
>
> On 2021-05-10 02:23, Toomas Soome via openindiana-discuss wrote:
> >> On 10. May 2021, at 12:05, Volker A. Brandt <vab at bb-c.de> wrote:
> >>
> >> Toomas Soome writes:
> >>> The immediate issue is https://www.illumos.org/issues/2757. In core,
> this
> >>> issue means that negative 32-bit numbers are not translated to negative
> >>> 64-bit numbers. Currently used gcc 4.4.4 does implement such
> translation
> >>> in
> >>> compiler, there is no such patch for more recent compilers (firstly,
> the
> >>> code path in more recent compilers has changed a lot, and secondly,
> such
> >>> translation should be done by OS). This effectively does block switch
> from
> >>> gcc 4.4.4. I actually am running gcc 7 built system, knowingly,
> keeping in
> >>> mind that I may be bitten by problems cause by this issue.
> >>
> >> In other words, when that issue is fixed, the primary compiler could be
> >> switched to gcc 7?
> >
> >
> > yes, assuming the needed cleanups are done;) but then again, this issue
> has
> > been
> > open for ~10 years.
> >
> >
> >>
> >>> Secondly, there are SPARC optimizer issues in gcc 7 and gcc 9 (likely
> with
> >>> 10 as well), crashing compiler while building specific parts of illumos
> >>> tree. One example:
> >> [...]
> >>
> >> Could this be worked around by selectively turning off -O2 until that
> >> is fixed?
> >
> > I have -O1 in my local patch, yes. But, the implication of this issue
> is, we
> > do
> > not really know how much, or to what extent, we can count on gcc. I do
> > realize
> > this does sound like FUD, but we do depend on external compiler and
> projects
> > are
> > rather removing SPARC support...
> >
> >>
> >>> I haven’t had time to open bugreport with gcc.
> >>
> >> Fair enough.
> >>
> >> [...]
> >>> As a side note, it is interesting to see SPARC related discussion in
> this
> >>> list; there is no package repository for SPARC by OpenIndiana;)
> >>
> >> Yes.  However, there are people working on new infrastructure for OI;
> >> as soon as that is in place there will be a public repo for OI/SPARC.
> >>
> >
> > Yes, I am aware of that too. From one hand it is nice, but from other
> hand,
> > there
> > is a reason *why* I would vote for removing SPARC support.
> >
> > And the reason is, I do think we should stop looking backward and start
> > looking
> > forward. I’d rather spend my time on building support for things like
> arm64
> > or
> > risc-v or some quantum computer or something what really matters for
> future
> > of
> > this OS.
> While I agree with you that OI _should_ look to, and target the future with
> its
> development efforts. As that will ensure its future relevance. I'm a bit
> nostalgic,
> and would hope that there is still a place for those that have the time, to
> post
> their work in an OI supported (SPARC) repo.
> -- long live SPARC!
>
> --Chris
> >
> > rgds,
> > toomas
> > _______________________________________________
> > openindiana-discuss mailing list
> > openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org
> > https://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
>
> --
>
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