From owner-freebsd-alpha Sat Dec 4 17:16:33 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-alpha@freebsd.org Received: from sr14.nsw-remote.bigpond.net.au (sr14.nsw-remote.bigpond.net.au [24.192.3.29]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EC56714E9D for ; Sat, 4 Dec 1999 17:16:28 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from reilly@zeta.org.au) Received: from areilly.bpc-users.org (CPE-24-192-49-170.nsw.bigpond.net.au [24.192.49.170]) by sr14.nsw-remote.bigpond.net.au (Pro-8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id MAA29363 for ; Sun, 5 Dec 1999 12:14:53 +1100 (EDT) Received: (qmail 20998 invoked by uid 1000); 5 Dec 1999 00:54:51 -0000 From: "Andrew Reilly" Date: Sun, 5 Dec 1999 11:54:51 +1100 To: Mike Smith Cc: Andrew Gallatin , Lord Isildur , Matthew Jacob , alpha@FreeBSD.ORG, port-alpha@netbsd.org Subject: Re: Q: Compaq, *BSD and 'Linux-only' AlphaBIOS (fwd) Message-ID: <19991205115451.A20025@gurney.reilly.home> References: <14408.29267.776501.133049@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> <199912040820.AAA00599@mass.cdrom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre2i In-Reply-To: <199912040820.AAA00599@mass.cdrom.com> Sender: owner-freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sat, Dec 04, 1999 at 12:20:15AM -0800, Mike Smith wrote: > There are licensed components inside SRM that prevent this from > happening; we've been down this path with Dompaq already. However, there > does seem to be some fairly strong interest inside the organisation for > the production of an SRM replacement that would be open-sourced. Apart from boot-monitor stuff, there's PALcode, right? What does that actually do for you, that takes so much (proprietary) code? Isn't it just shortcuts to hide the TLB/memory management hardware under some sort of high-level API? Put another way: is there anything about the various Alpha implementations that are insufficiently documented, or prevent us from doing these things ourselves, right on the chip itself? The MIPS chips have to do the same sorts of manual TLB things, I thought, without the assistance of PALcode. The *BSD reliance on the SRM seems to basically limit the Alpha purchase choices to Compaq. I.e., not Samsung/AlphaProcessor. -- Andrew To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-alpha" in the body of the message