On 10/21/2007 01:06 PM, J. Mayer wrote: > On Sun, 2007-10-21 at 05:43 -0500, Rob Landley wrote: >> On Saturday 20 October 2007 3:56:12 am J. Mayer wrote: >>> On Fri, 2007-10-19 at 19:49 -0500, Rob Landley wrote: >>>> On Sunday 14 October 2007 5:14:27 am J. Mayer wrote: >>>>> On Sun, 2007-10-14 at 11:19 +0200, Oliver Falk wrote: >>>>>> Hi list! >>>>> Hi you ! >>>>> >>>>>> Just wanted to know how far the progress on alpha target is? I would >>>>>> be happy if I have some 'virtual alpha' to test new isos. >>>>>> >>>>>> If I can help some way (I have a few alphas around). Let me know. >>>>> I'm happy to see someone interresting in improving Alpha support, which >>>>> is .... very alpha for now ! >>>> I'm interested in testing Alpha too, but I haven't seem a >>>> qemu-system-alpha show up yet. Alas, I have no hardware or specific >>>> expertise in this platform, I'm just trying to build and boot Linux >>>> kernels (and corresponding root filesystems) on as many emulated target >>>> platforms as I can. >>> There are a lot of things missing for qemu-system-alpha to be available: >>> - the PALCode emulation is far from being complete or even usable >> I have no idea what that is. > > The PALCode is mainly equivalent to the microcode of most CPU > architectures. What is different to microcode is that is uses only > regular Alpha instructions, just adding 4 instructions to access special > "hardware registers" and access the memory with different priviledge > levels. Another main idea is that everyone can write its own PALCode > image and switch to it at run-time. Then, for example, the PALCode ABI > is not the same one if you run Linux or Windows NT. The PALCode handles > all complex operations. For example, the CPU provides only TLB and the > MMU tables search is actually implemented in software, in the PALCode. > This greatly simplifies the CPU design and allows a high level of > flexibility. And if your OS need a specific ABI for example to handle > CPU exception, you define your ABI, write the PALCode using Alpha insns > and use it ! The Alpha CPU also provide an instruction to do PALCode > calls from the OS or applications. > There are 3 (4 ?) "native" PALCode ABIs documented in the Alpha CPUs > specifications then those can be emulated at the host side in Qemu. It > is in fact needed to emulate a subset of the PALCode even to run > user-mode programs.
Pretty good explained! Thanks! However, what do you need to make the alpha emulation work? Does ssh to an Alpha help you? I'm quite sure I can offer you access to some ev5 machine very soon and I might give access to some ds10 (ev67 machine). There's also some ds10 (ev6 'only') machine in Australia, that actually works as a builder for the AlphaCore project - but it's not mine and I would need to ask if I can give access to someone else... -of
