Re: [RFC] Deprecation and removal of the drm2 driver

> >
> >
> > it makes me giggle that people still think non-amd64 is "legacy".
> >
> > i386 is alive and well - new chips are being fabbed based on the 586
> > design with pci-e slots; not to mention things like the Talos and
> > AmigaOne for PowerPC.

Yes, some how we need to shake off the idea that all the world
is going to be 64 bit, and stop talking about EOL for 32 bit
x86,   IMHO that would be a serious mistake.  For one any VM
that does not need >4G of address space is a waste to run
in 64 bit mode.

> DRM2 doesn't support anything later than mid-Haswell. The chips in
> question all pre-date 2007. Users of low-volume hardware on chips from

Um, haswell announced in 2011, started shipping in mid 2013, and last
product started to ship in 2015, so if "mid-haswell" is the supported
chip arrena that would be pre date 2012?

Also as the Moore's law curve flattens expect the life of these
older, but not so old, machines to live quiet some time.  I
believe we are talking sandy bridge and earlier?  If that is
corret Sandy bridge is still a very viable system.

> that period are welcome to continue to sustain themselves on the drm2
> port just as the other 95+% of the user base will use what is now
> referred to as drm-next. Even by powerpc maintainers' admission DRM2
> also only barely works there. I've promised Justin that I'll make
> drm-next work on Talos once POWER9 support is solid enough.

I think the original RFC has been answer, yes there are people still
using DRM2, and they wish to continue to use it into the 12.x time
frame.

Lets find a technically agreeable solution to that, and move forward.

I am concerned about just disabling the compile on amd64,
that typically leads to bit rot of the i386 code.

I am concerned about just shoving it out to ports, as that makes
it rot even faster.

I am still very concerned that our in base i9xx code is like 4
years old and everyone is told to go to kmod-next from ports
as well.

No, I do not have a solution, but I have not tried hard to find
one.  I am sure if we try hard to find one it can be done.

Regards,
-- 
Rod Grimes                                                 rgrimes_at_freebsd.org