* Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton:
i checked the ELF v2 PDF, it specifically mentions VSX.
It's also implicit in the function calling convention for quadwords, which are passed in registers, and perhaps in other places. That's why it's non-trivial to change.
It is possible to define a different ABI without VSX support, but it would have a different GNU triplet (not powerpc64le-*-linux-gnu) and a different RPM architecture (not ppc64le).
i found this:
https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/ELF/ppc64/PPC-elf64abi.html
which appears to be a supplemental of the old PowerPC 64 bit ELF V1 ABI.
Isn't this the V1 ABI, with function descriptors and all?
https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/ELF/ppc64/PPC-elf64abi.html#FUNC-DES
The V1 ABI does not require VSX. But it's also restricted to big-endian in the GNU/Linux implementation.
Thanks, Florian