[haiku-development] Re: [RFC / Important] Removing extra architectures
- From: chase rayfield <cusbrar2@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 14:46:07 -0800 (PST)
I'm not sure why you would want to drop PPC it is the most mature port is it
not with Arm trailing slightly behind? PPC hardware is also pretty common even
if you do have to cobble together a working system it can be done on a hobbyist
budget.
If you drop PPC you also drop OpenFirmware support which decreases the chance
of a Sparc port which is also a *neat* architecture and unlike PPC highly
resilient (I am trying to win you over :P here aren't I?) I have 25 year old
boxes that run like new and and all the more modern hardware I also have is
still built like a tank even moreso. They are also not terribly expensive I
have a fairly huge collection (12 Machines at last count + 2 68k Macs) and
have only invested about $350 total including shipping. If anyone really wants
to have a go at Sparc32 support I can give them access to hardware even ship it
to them. Also Oracle servers are basically really loud desktops with PCI-e and
fast disks... and they get cheap once they drop out of service after about 2-4
years.... 32 hardware threads :) on my biggest box. Sparc also tends to draw in
a different category of academics ... and clang is self hosting on Linux/Sparc
as well as being the only fully
open CPU architecture out of those discussed here.
68k... it might be possible to morph this into a dual port to the Atari and Mac
SE/30 since the SE/30 supports 128Mb ram... it would be ridiculously cool to
have a Black & White Haiku.
Mipsel... farewell.... SGI machines are out there but the are dead in the
server space unlike Sparc which is still growing architecturally at least.
Arm... not living up to all its performance promises but worth keeping. Maybe
keep Mips in mind when designing since they tend to have the same type of
bootloaders etc. Supporting more than a few devices would be madness though I
think... and by the time you develop support its obsolete.
Most of the x86 ones are obvious... except I would suggested adding x32 ABI
support for R2 as the primary userspace on a 64bit kernel... That way Haiku can
eek out the maximum speed from most apps and still be able to run whatever big
memory applications like Blender (They recommend 16Gb and 8 cores currently...)
which may come along.
I haven't pushed any code to Haiku but I've been following Haiku and reporting
bugs since before Michael Phipps took his leave. I think its important to
remember that having fun is the key thing here... I certainly don't own 12
Sparc computers because I find them boring :) and sadly while deleting code can
feel productive it also tends to be a sad/disheartening chore as well sometimes.
cb88/Chase
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