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Date:      Fri, 8 Sep 2017 22:33:12 -0700
From:      Russell Haley <russ.haley@gmail.com>
To:        Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
Cc:        "freebsd-arm@freebsd.org" <freebsd-arm@freebsd.org>, "freebsd-arch@freebsd.org" <arch@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: FCP-100: armv7 plan
Message-ID:  <CABx9NuRVq%2Buuu6yLuzhLU3G3zYZyyLCinXjPQodrpc=Xp-K8uA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfqC3xrhSXPQGaf34pGfqrqa9KGXz%2BjLfKTU_O=%2BOKoWXQ@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <CANCZdfrCwdVOGWunSAjuxHzGcqhuH24iRQg63rvPFXXSmm-C6Q@mail.gmail.com> <CABx9NuSawbewJCD4C72C6dFwQaH3eRxWqBEQokzivJHkdwErQw@mail.gmail.com> <CANCZdfqC3xrhSXPQGaf34pGfqrqa9KGXz%2BjLfKTU_O=%2BOKoWXQ@mail.gmail.com>

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On Fri, Sep 8, 2017 at 10:10 PM, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Sep 8, 2017 at 7:52 PM, Russell Haley <russ.haley@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 8, 2017 at 4:11 PM, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> wrote:
>> > Greetings,
>> >
>> > This will serve as 'Last Call' for any objections to the plan to create
>> > an
>> > armv7 MACHINE_ARCH in FreeBSD, as documented in FCP-0100.
>> >
>> > Please see https://github.com/freebsd/fcp/blob/master/fcp-0100.md for
>> > all
>> > the details. This has been discussed in the mailing lists, on IRC, etc
>> > and
>> > I believe that I've captured the consensus from those discussions.
>> >
>> > I'm interested in any last minute comments, but as far as I can tell I
>> > have
>> > consensus on this issue. Absent any comments to the contrary, I'll
>> > proceed
>> > to having core@ vote that this document represents consensus. Now is the
>> > time to speak up if I've gotten anything wrong.
>> >
>> > Once the core vote is done, I plan on committing the code reviews I have
>> > open on this:
>> > https://reviews.freebsd.org/D12027
>> > and
>> > https://reviews.freebsd.org/D12010
>> > (again, I welcome any commits / criticisms in phabricator on the
>> > specific
>> > issues in this code)
>> >
>> > Thanks for any comments...
>> >
>> > Warner
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > freebsd-arm@freebsd.org mailing list
>> > https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-arm
>> > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-arm-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"
>>
>> Hi Warner,
>>
>> Thanks for your work on this. General thoughts in and around this subject.
>>
>> 1) I like how you split the commit into generic build system changes
>> vs BSP changes. It was helpful in aiding visibility in the code
>> changes.
>
>
> Thanks.
>
>>
>> 2) Are these statements true?
>>
>> - We will not be differentiating hard/soft float. It is assumed
>> armv6/7 are hard float (no letter suffixes)
>
>
> Yes. We switched to only hard float on armv6 prior to the switch. While one
> can still build a softfloat system, it's not really supported (we don't test
> it, we don't build packages for it, etc). That support exists in the tree
> for the transition libraries only and may be removed in the future.
>
>>
>> - armv4/5 has no changes
>
>
> Correct.
>
>>
>> - armv6 is split into armv6, armv7
>
>
> Yes.
>
>>
>> - armv8 is aarch64
>
>
> armv8 has no (current) meaning to FreeBSD.
>
>>
>> - We will not be supporting aarch64 32 bit extensions for running
>> armv6/7 binaries
>
>
> That's an orthogonal problem that a aarch64 kernel will solve, but is
> unrelated to the build system.
>
>>
>> - There is no way to run aarch64 on armv7
>
>
> Nope.
>
>>
>> 3) Can I ask if there will be other armv[0-9+]  architectures created
>> or do you think everything new will transition to 64 bit? If so, will
>> we (FreeBSD) be able to differentiate those architectures in the
>> future (aarch64v2)? I guess what I'm asking is "in your expert
>> opinion, have we taken enough steps to ensure clean
>> code/names/you-get-my-point for future changes?" What else could we
>> do? It seems that there is a lot of changes in arm compared to other
>> architectures. The rapid development of different things by the Arm
>> group and other vendors seems to cause a lot of churn. Do you think
>> our naming conventions do enough to take this into consideration?
>> Modern hardware manufacturing seem much different then what I am
>> reading about in Unix history. Have our naming patterns kept up?
>
>
> Those are all good questions. While it's hard to say for sure they won't be
> any new armvX architectures that implement 32-bit ABIs, there's been a
> strongly telegraphed signal that all new ARM innovation will be in the
> 64-bit area. They've also claimed that new revisions of aarch64 will be more
> orderly and less chaotic than things have been in the 32-bit arm world. It's
> unclear still if that will actually be the case, but given we have little
> basis for guessing the proper names in the future, it's hard to future-proof
> here.
>
>>
>> 4) Also, if my supposition about arm 32/64 compatibility is correct,
>> do we have plans in place for future boards may have 32/64 bit
>> compatibility like the RPi3? Or, is it just two different builds and
>> downloads? (which I'm cool with, but would like to know)
>
>
> The notion is that for those AARCH64 SoCs that have the ability to run
> 32-bit, we'll have two builds. One will be aarch64 based and the other armv7
> based. We'll likely roll that into armv7 GENERIC so we can get away from
> having so many distributions (move to more of a base image + flavoring
> step), but that work isn't complete enough to talk much about.
>
> Work to make RPI3 work with a 32-bit kernel appears to be reaching
> completion. There should be something there soon (if it hasn't already been
> announced...)
>
> Warner
>
>

https://www.netgate.com/products/sg-3100.html ?

;)
Russ



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