On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 8:46 PM, Ignacio Marambio Cat?n <darkjoker at gmail.com > wrote:
> what about the chinese Loongson processor? > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson > > a notebook running mandriva using that chip seems to be on the way > http://www.gdium.com/description > > and there is some documentation about it in > http://www.loongsondeveloper.com > We could certainly consider that as a candidate platform for initial development, if it ever shows up. As John S. mentioned earlier, I think the very first two high level tasks are: 1) Identify a standard setup using some chosen software emulator, and target initial bootstrapping on that. 2) Get a MIPS cross toolchain working (primarily work in sgs/ld). I did this once before with a Sparc host/PPC target, but Sun Labs had already blazed the trail for x86 as host. MIPS ELF will be a new adventure. I believe #1 brings the benefit that there is no requirement for purchasing new hardware, and it would be more likely to get more contributions. As this is almost certainly going to be powered by individual contributors (likely all external), I think having a low-cost and lightweight development environment would be crucial to the success of this project. I am certain that not having a cheap, available, and well documented PowerPC platform available had a detrimental effect on the continuation of the PowerPC port. I think the situation is a little better with MIPS, but time will tell. We have to consider the availability of drivers as well. This port to MIPS could very well entail writing new chipset drivers. I think there are issues with the current available lot of software emulators, but we can discuss details of that on the new mailing list if we make it that far. I will have access to a Movidis x16 NAP box soon, and would be happy to provide access to that for contributors as well. Mark -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/powerpc-discuss/attachments/20081020/9fb6d2ff/attachment.html>
