Fedora: Support for new PA6T systems (ppc32)

Josh Boyer jwboyer at fedoraproject.org
Sat May 17 23:40:33 UTC 2014


On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 6:20 PM, Al Dunsmuir <al.dunsmuir at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> On Saturday, May 17, 2014, 8:52:55 AM, Christian Zigotzky wrote:
>> A-EON had sold a lot of new PA6T systems
>> (http://www.a-eon.com/?page=nemo), last year. And there are lot of PA6T
>> systems to buy
>> (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1160).
>> It would be a pity to remove ppc32 support because 64-bit packages won't
>> work. The PA6T is not compatible (enough) to Power5 or newer which is
>> the minimum requirement for 64-bit Fedora to work.
>
> ppc64  is  focussing  on modern 64-bit architecture levels, and likely
> wants  to exploit the new instruction sets for best performance.  That
> is entirely reasonable.
>
> Some questions:
>
> 1) Is the PA6T Linux kernel that you have 32-bit, or 64 bit?

They would have to be 64bit.  It's a 64bit CPU and PowerPC doesn't do
the 32-bit kernel on 64-bit hardware.

> 2) Could  the  PA6T,  PowerMac G5, and older IBM pSeries use a common
>    64-bit kernel, built at a lower arch level?
>    - PA Semi Dual-core PA6T-1682M is Power ISA v2.04
>    - My PowerMac G5 has an (IBM?) PowerPC 970 - Power ISA v2.02
>    - Alex's IBM pSeries 610 (Model 6C1) is POWER3-II
>
> Such  a  kernel would support a 32-bit chroot environment suitable for
> initial  ppc32 builds and development. Alternatively, multiple kernels
> would  allow sharing the lowest common denominator 64-bit minimal core
> functionality  but  allow  the  G5  and  PA6T  to  better  exploit the
> hardware.
>
> Supporting this seems like a reasonable parallel goal to build up core
> functionality  for  the lower architecture 64-bit processors, distinct
> from  the  mainstream ppc64. It would require a distinct arch name for
> the  common  (P3)  and  slightly higher (G5 and PA6T) levels - perhaps
> ppc64p3, ppc64g5 and ppc64pa6t respectively.

I'm not adding support to the kernel for any of those, sorry.  The
existing ppc64 kernel works fine on g5 and it should on pa6t.  There's
no way I'm enabling POWER3 support either.

Your proposal has gone from "continue with what is provided for ppc32
today" to "continue with what is provided for ppc32 today plus add 3
entirely new kernel builds."  That is entirely unreasonable.

josh


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