Re: the future of sun4v

On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 01:44:25PM +0200, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> Peter Jeremy wrote:
> >[Replies re-directed to freebsd-sun4v]
> >
> >On 2008-Aug-21 14:42:55 -0700, Kip Macy <kmacy_at_freebsd.org> wrote:
> >>I believe that there is a general expectation by freebsd users and
> >>developers that unsupported code should not be in CVS. Although sun4v
> >>is a very interesting platform for developers doing SMP work, I simply
> >>do not have the time or energy to maintain it. If someone else would
> >>like to step up and try his hand I would be supportive of his efforts.
> >>In the likely event that no one steps forward by the time that 7.1 is
> >>released I will ask that it be moved to the Attic.
> >
> >Since there are no other current SPARC CPUs that FreeBSD can run on
> >(the US-II has been obsolete for about 6 years and FreeBSD won't run
> >on any more recent sun4u chips), that will also remove the
> >justification for maintaining a SPARC64 port.
> >
> >I don't have the knowledge or available time to maintain the sun4v
> >port by myself but would be happy to be part of a team doing so.  One
> >impediment I have is that I don't have a T-1 or T-2 system that I can
> >dedicate to FreeBSD.  I could work on FreeBSD in a guest domain - but
> >since FreeBSD doesn't support either the virtual disk or virtual
> >network, actually getting FreeBSD running there presents somewhat of a
> >challenge.
> >
> 
> There are two t1000 systems in the freebsd.org cluster that are 
> available for people to work on.  Rink Springer has also expressed 
> interest in this.
> 
> Perhaps Kip can explain some more about what things he looked at, but 
> the most serious bugs might be in pmap or perhaps trap handling. 
> Operationally, things like buildworld -jN die quickly with random 
> signals, kernel traps, etc.
> 
> Kris
> 
> P.S. It looks like marius has made progress on US III but sun4u is still 
> an architectural dead end.

Well, let's see what architecture the upcoming Rock CPUs are;
judging their feature list they appear to be a continuation of
the Fujitsu sun4u line rather than a successor of UST1/2 :)

Marius