On 4-Feb-08, at 12:37 PM, Christopher Frost wrote: > On Monday 04 February 2008 02:12:22 pm William Kucharski wrote: > (Apologies, forgot to hit reply-all) on the last email.) >> I don't mean to throw cold water on any of this - I'm glad people are >> excited - but there are two big issues with a port to the PS3: >> >> 1) The PS3 uses a chip rather different from any other on the >> market, and >> it's a 64-bit processor. All work to date has been done with the >> implicit >> assumption it's going to run on a 32-bit CPU. Not an >> insurmountable issue >> to be sure, but it increases the difficulty of the port. >> >> From the information I am told, the 'Cell' contains a normal >> PowerPC64 (same > ISA), and it will not run a 32 bit kernel, but will run 32 bit code. > So if > the kernel ran on the PowerMac G5, it would also run on the PS3. > >> 2) Documentation. Unless I'm mistaken I don't believe Sony releases >> hardware information regarding the PS3 - interrupt levels, >> controllers, >> hardware interfaces, etc. The Linux guys may have been able to >> reverse >> engineer some of this, but if you've been digging through the GPL >> Linux >> kernel you have to be careful not to use any of that code in the CDDL >> OpenSolaris code. >> > The Cell information, is also released. Yet the kernel runs out of the > hypervisor, Sony documents this in their "otheros" information. To > also be > quite honest, there is a lot of published papers on the cell > structure and > framework.. Yet only a base 64 bit kernel is needed to have it up and > running, as the SPUFS is extra, and isn't a necessary to run the > kernel. > >> Note the lack of hardware documentation is also an issue with >> PowerMac >> ports. >> >> There are a multitude of other issues, of course - but those are >> the big >> two. >> >> William Kucharski > > I appreciate the feedback, comments and concerns, but if there is no > future > for a 64bit kernel... What exactly is the point of this project again? > Embedded is nice and all.. but that sure makes our community quite a > bit > smaller. I'd have trouble believing that Sun/Toshiba/IBM would be > against > increasing the benefits of their new, joint, venture. If it would be > helpful > I contact them, I'd be able to do that also. Yet, I of course wouldn't > proceed unless this project actually had a solid roadmap. > > Lots of issues arise for everything today, if everyone ignored them > all just > who's hands would our future be in?
+1 The PS3 isn't my first choice, but you bring up good points with respect to it's abundance, particularly since macppc hardware is all at the end of it's service life ( and the PS3 is still at the beginning ). I'm not sure how much that and POWER gear differ, but to add to your offer of shell access on a ps3, if someone can devise a strategy by which I can feel comfortable offering shell access on my 43p ( POWER3+ ), I'm more than willing to offer that as a development platform also. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: PGP.sig Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 194 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/powerpc-discuss/attachments/20080204/7b1c09ee/attachment.bin>
