[OpenIndiana-discuss] The Register today

[Judah Richardson]

On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 5:58 PM Mike Carroll <mdcarroll6 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I meant comparatively speaking to SPARC.

Ah, OK. I wouldn't even think about SPARC prices. As the saying goes, "if
you have to ask ..."

Most of the SPARC stuff seems niche and expensive.

Agreed.

Not sure how well illumos kernels would run on ARM if ported.
>
As far as Arm SBSA-compliant machines are concerned, I'm not aware of
anything that isn't Linux running on those in production. Personally I
wouldn't attempt to run Illumos on an SBC, even a Pi 4B, due to limited
RAM.

________________________________
> From: Judah Richardson <judahrichardson at gmail.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, May 11, 2021 5:46 PM
> To: Discussion list for OpenIndiana <openindiana-discuss at openindiana.org>
> Subject: Re: [OpenIndiana-discuss] The Register today
>
> 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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> > https://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
> >
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