* Moffett, Kyle D | 2010-03-23 17:52:57 [-0500]: >Ah, my apologies. I'd actually already seen that one, but wasn't paying >enough attention when submitting the bugreport. I saw in your earlier bug report that you don't have everything built (yet). At [0] I have more or less complete port of an older lenny snapshot. However, the Debian name is different. I recall that the crossbuild had some dependencies wrong and -fstack-protector did something wrong. Watch out if you building something cross :)
>> The suggested names were different, your input in the discussion is >> certainly welcome so that the name can be defined once for all. >> >> e500 might not be a very wise name if it refers to a specific product >> rather than a processor family. > >The "spe" in the arch triplet refers to the set of extensions to the >PowerPC/POWER instruction set that are implemented by the MPC85xx-series >processors. The e500-series cores themselves conform to Power ISA v.2.03, >but the particular implementation of floating-point support is quirky enough >that it requires a separate ABI. I would not use the term quirky. It is not the "traditional" FPU instead it is a different one. I think it is described as embedded FPU. ARM on the other hand has a few more "choices". > http://www.phxmicro.com/CourseNotes/E500CORERM_rev1.pdf > > drivers. Customer software that uses SPE or embedded > floating-point APU instructions at the assembly level or that > uses SPE intrinsics will require rewriting for upward > compatibility with next-generation PowerQUICC devices. I was not aware of that. >So while it is theoretically conceivable that a processor core series other >than the e500 would support the "SPE" instruction set, it is unlikely. In >the event that something like that occurs however, it would be no different >technically from the "amd64" or "i386" architectures. Neither of those >names are even remotely accurate today yet they are commonly understood. They are people that install i386 instead of amd64 on their brand new intel machine because it is not an AMD. So it leads to confusion. In "our" case it is simple because PowerPC Lenny+ does not boot. >Unfortunately, for processors which implement the "SPE" instruction set >there is no other hardware support for floating point. As a result, >efficient operation on these processors virtually requires a separate >architecture port. That is true. I've backed this up with some numbers at [1] >So it is my belief that "e500" is the correct and appropriate name for the >architecture. Which brings me to the following question: There are currently two types of the core: e500v1 and e500v2. The latter implements also the floating point type double in hardware while the former doesn't. Which one did pick? I would prefer to go for e500v2 since I don't think that there much e500v1 around plus I don't belive that those are used in multimedia like applications. And it would be probably nice to mark this in arch name. >To be blatantly honest, I personally would really prefer if that's the final >name as it would save me about 3 days worth of re-bootstrapping packages >using a different architecture token. If you all think something else is >definitely more appropriate I will however defer to your judgment (with some >amount of grumbling and complaining). I hope that you don't think that I am a total ass if I say that google should have help find you [3]. No offense please. I would love to have someone on my side so that port is not just a one man show :) Anyway. My plan is to settle down on a name and get everything rebuilt for debian-ports. So even if we stick to e500 as you wish everything will be rebuilt by buildd or atleast by manual sbuild anyway. So what about keeping powerpc somewhere in the name? I think it is a good idea to denote the double type (I would prefer not to switch it once we have a port). So powerpce500v2 would make it clear, wouldn't it? It is hard to read so maybe e500v2 isn't that bad at all. >Cheers, >Kyle Moffett [0] http://download.breakpoint.cc/debian/linutronix-lenny-gnuspe/ [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=520877#48 [2] http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-powe...@lists.debian.org/msg60499.html Sebastian -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
