Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2017 11:18:20 -0700 From: Mark Millard <markmi@dsl-only.net> To: PeerCorps Trust Fund <ipc@peercorpstrust.org> Cc: Kevin Bowling <kevin.bowling@kev009.com>, FreeBSD PowerPC ML <freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: FreeBSD on OPENPOWER Message-ID: <541DD61B-2613-47EC-95DA-7B28438211E9@dsl-only.net> In-Reply-To: <d2266fb6-5407-d246-6054-06d2e23dd134@peercorpstrust.org> References: <fb1cf2ce-740d-f829-3508-f4091c78e965@peercorpstrust.org> <CAK7dMtC03LLohjybsYydkYA4=zQYUOWpOj7fw%2BmQkpQE2RGWOg@mail.gmail.com> <d2266fb6-5407-d246-6054-06d2e23dd134@peercorpstrust.org>
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On 2017-Jun-10, at 10:15 AM, PeerCorps Trust Fund = <ipc@peercorpstrust.org> wrote: > Hello! >=20 > Happy to hear this. Out of curiosity what exactly is needed for the = FreeBSD bring up? There is an old (2015-Jan-31) page: https://wiki.freebsd.org/POWER8 I expect things have progressed since then. An old 2015-May status report was ( = https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2015-May/001637.html = ): > FreeBSD on POWER8 >=20 > URL:=20 > http://www.tyan.com/campaign/openpower/ >=20 >=20 > Contact: Nathan Whitehorn < > nwhitehorn at freebsd.org > > > Contact: Justin Hibbits < > jhibbits at freebsd.org > > > Contact: Adrian Chadd < > adrian at freebsd.org > > >=20 > IBM and the OpenPOWER Foundation are pushing for a wider software = and > hardware ecosystem for POWER8-based systems. Starting in January = 2014, > we have been doing bringup work on a Tyan GN70-BP010 POWER8 server, = a > quad-core 3 GHz system with a total of 32 hardware threads. >=20 > Updates since the previous report: > * FreeBSD now boots under a hypervisor with the virtual SCSI = block > device; the issue previously preventing this has been fixed. > * The powerpc64 pmap code was rewritten to be more scalable, as = the > previous pmap code did not scale beyond a small number of CPUs. > * Initial support for IBM's Vector-Scalar Extensions (VSX) was = added. > * The FreeBSD kernel was made completely position independent for > powerpc64, and later powerpc32 as well. >=20 > This project is sponsored by The FreeBSD Foundation. >=20 > Open tasks: >=20 > 1. Get FreeBSD booting natively, rather than under KVM. This = requires > writing OPAL drivers for the various hardware devices in the > system. > 2. Integrate loader(8) with petitboot. http://adrianchadd.blogspot.de/2015/02/freebsd-on-power8-its-alive.html = says, in part: > Fast forward a few weeks - he's figured out the KVM issues, their lack = of support for some mandated hypervisor APIs and other bugs - FreeBSD = now boots inside of the hypervisor environment and seems stable enough = to do development on. >=20 > He then found the existing powerpc pmap (physical memory management) = code wasn't very SMP friendly - it works fine on one and two CPU powerpc = machines, but this POWER8 evaluation board is a 4-core, 32-thread CPU. = So a few days of development went by and he rewrote most of the pmap = code to be much more fine grained locked and scale much, much better = than the existing code. (He also found the PS3 hypervisor layer isn't = thread-safe.) >=20 > What's been done thus far? >=20 > =E2=80=A2 FreeBSD boots inside the hypervisor environment; > =E2=80=A2 Virtualised console, networking and storage all work; > =E2=80=A2 (in progress) new, scalable pmap implementation; > =E2=80=A2 Initial support for the Vector-Scalar Extension (VSX) = that's found on POWER7 and POWER8. > So, I'm impressed. Nathan's done a fantastic job bringing the whole = thing up. There's some further work on the new powerpc technology that = needs doing (things like the new vector processing units, performance = counter support and such) and I'm sure Justin and Nathan will poke = powerpc dtrace support into further good shape. I'm going to see if we = can fix a chelsio 40G NIC into one of these and work with their = developers to fix any endian/busdma issues that creep up, and then do = some network stack scaling testing with it. There's also the missing = hardware/hypervisor support to run FreeBSD on the bare metal, which = would be a fantastic achievement. A 2016-Mar note ( = https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ppc/2016-March/008113.html ) was: > We boot multiuser without problems in the simulator. There are some=20 > remaining issues involving the bootloader that need to be resolved for=20= > real hardware. > -Nathan There was: = http://freebsd-bugs.freebsd.narkive.com/xZOoCt9C/bug-210106-current-won-t-= boot-on-ppc64-power8-under-ibm-kvm about "[Bug 210106] Current won't boot on PPC64 Power8 under IBM KVM" and its fix. I'll note list the material here. I'll stop searching with that. I do not know current details. I've never had access to such hardware. > On 06/10/2017 07:16 PM, Kevin Bowling wrote: >> I am interested in it commercially. I am attempting to work with IBM = to >> fund SemiHalf to do most of the bring up but don't have any = definitive >> answer as to whether this will actually happen yet. If you have a >> commercial use case, I would recommend bubbling it up through your = sales >> channel. >>=20 >> Regards, >>=20 >> On Sat, Jun 10, 2017 at 8:29 AM, PeerCorps Trust Fund < >> ipc@peercorpstrust.org> wrote: >>=20 >>> Hi, >>>=20 >>> Is there a document or other reference material concerning the = status >>> (intended or otherwise) of FreeBSD on OpenPower 8/9? Are there = others >>> interested in this? >>>=20 >>> Mike =3D=3D=3D Mark Millard markmi at dsl-only.net
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