Re: [9fans] Plan 9 potential target ports (Was: PDP11 (Was: Re: what heavy negativity!))

2018-10-12 Thread Chris McGee
> I do recall, vaguely, an Olimex comment about graphics being more
> accessible, but I did not make a note, the little that stuck was that
> some hardware manufacturer had embraced a slightly better standard
> than VESA, or some such. There may be some hardware out there that
> does not have "closed" graphics.
>

I thought that aijuboard got around this with an fpga implementation of a
frame buffer and hdmi signalling, but I suppose that ramps up the price
significantly as you'd need an fpga board in there and also an hdmi capable
lcd. Otherwise, I wonder how difficult it would be to set up a framebuffer
on the A64 like what was done with Richard's rpi code.

Chris


Re: [9fans] Plan 9 potential target ports (Was: PDP11 (Was: Re: what heavy negativity!))

2018-10-12 Thread Lucio De Re
On 10/12/18, hiro <23h...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> i think generally there's a lot of low-power linux stuff to chose
> from, but once you plan to port plan9 to it, the fragmented nature of
> the arm platforms becomes a problem. no free lunch :(
>
That is a fact, Hiro. I paid scant attention to that issue, perhaps
being old enough to consider (wrongly, in the case of the Plan 9 user
space) that graphics are not indispensable.

I do recall, vaguely, an Olimex comment about graphics being more
accessible, but I did not make a note, the little that stuck was that
some hardware manufacturer had embraced a slightly better standard
than VESA, or some such. There may be some hardware out there that
does not have "closed" graphics.

In a perfect world, that would be an opportunity, but it seems we're
not there yet,

Lucio.



Re: [9fans] Plan 9 potential target ports (Was: PDP11 (Was: Re: what heavy negativity!))

2018-10-12 Thread hiro
i have heard the name olimex in this context, too.

a big problem with all alternatives is often that graphics or video
decoding require binary firmware, or work only on linux, and no
documentation exists from the chip vendors.

i think generally there's a lot of low-power linux stuff to chose
from, but once you plan to port plan9 to it, the fragmented nature of
the arm platforms becomes a problem. no free lunch :(



Re: [9fans] zero copy & 9p (was Re: PDP11 (Was: Re: what heavy negativity!)

2018-10-12 Thread Ori Bernstein
On Thu, 11 Oct 2018 13:43:00 -0700, Lyndon Nerenberg  wrote:

> Another case to ponder ...   We're handling the incoming I/Q data
> stream, but need to fan that out to many downstream consumers.  If
> we already read the data into a page, then flip it to the first
> consumer, is there a benefit to adding a reference counter to that
> read-only page and leaving the page live until the counter expires?
> 
> Hiro clamours for benchmarks.  I agree.  Some basic searches I've
> done don't show anyone trying this out with P9 (and publishing
> their results).  Anybody have hints/references to prior work?
> 
> --lyndon
> 

I don't believe anyone has done the work yet. I'd be interested
to see what you come up with.


-- 
Ori Bernstein