Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 10:30:45 -0700 From: John-Mark Gurney <jmg@funkthat.com> To: Andrew Turner <andrew@fubar.geek.nz> Cc: freebsd-arm@freebsd.org Subject: Re: [RFC] Add and armv7hf TARGET_ARCH Message-ID: <20141006173045.GE1852@funkthat.com> In-Reply-To: <20141006134626.59cc5573@bender.lan> References: <20141006134626.59cc5573@bender.lan>
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Andrew Turner wrote this message on Mon, Oct 06, 2014 at 13:46 +0100:
> I'm interested in peoples opinion on creating a new TARGET_ARCH to
> target ARMv7 SoCs. This will target all the current Cortex-A chips we
> support but not the Raspberry Pi. My intention with this is to have it
> become the tier 1 arm platform.
>
> This platform will support 32-bit Cortex-A based SoCs with a VFP
> unit. As it would be targeting ARMv7 we could look at supporting
> Thumb-2.
>
> As the VFP unit is optional and future SoCs without it will only be
> supported by the armv6 TARGET_ARCH, however I would expect almost all
> ARMv7 designs to include it.
So, what are the specific pros of having a new arch? I see you talk
about Thumb-2 support, but are there other advantages? Will we get
significant performance boosts? What?
Also, what impact will this have on trying to get binary packages
for other arm archs? i.e. will this significantly take away resources?
If we do this split, why would we want to build binary packages for
RPI?
> There is a downside to this, and as far as I know the problems are:
> * It could be confusing to figure out which TARGET_ARCH you need.
> * The Raspberry Pi will not be supported as its core is too old.
>
> I've attached my patch to build as armv7hf. It has been tested on a
> Wandboard Quad.
--
John-Mark Gurney Voice: +1 415 225 5579
"All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."
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