SPARC Status (Was Re: Secondary Architecture Status?)

Kyle McMartin kyle at mcmartin.ca
Mon May 11 22:18:12 UTC 2009


On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 04:40:37PM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
> On 05/11/2009 03:55 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> > On Mon, 2009-05-11 at 14:51 -0400, Josh Boyer wrote:
> > 
> >> I would really like to see a proliferation of secondary arches in
> >> Fedora, but I don't think 'workstation' is a viable usage model for
> >> them to get started.  Most will have to focus on the type of hardware
> >> that actually sells for that arch, and yes I realize that can be at
> >> odds with some of the directions Fedora is going.
> > 
> > Semi-sidetrack here: Ubuntu has a secondary 'architecture' called LPIA
> > which is, in fact, just an alternative set of compiler optimizations
> > which they claim results in better code for 'netbook
> > systems' (presumably meaning 'Atom CPUs'). Would that be something we
> > could look into, or not interesting?
> 
> Sure, I see no reason why someone couldn't take that on as a "secondary
> arch". It would need a new arch identifier target for rpm to prevent
> namespace collisions.
> 

To be fair, the Ubuntu 'lpia' distribution actually performs /worse/
than normal compiled x86 code. (Since the GCC version they used didn't
support scheduling for Atom. notting, others, and I have all done
benchmarks when the i586 switch took place to see this.)

Profiling to see if the atom target actually helps at all in gcc-4.4
thanks to Jakub backporting from GCC trunk would be a worthwhile
endeavour though.

regards, Kyle




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