From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 24 23:43:12 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 836E937B401 for ; Thu, 24 Jul 2003 23:43:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net (heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.189]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C23E443F85 for ; Thu, 24 Jul 2003 23:43:11 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tlambert2@mindspring.com) Received: from user-2ivfi6b.dialup.mindspring.com ([165.247.200.203] helo=mindspring.com) by heron.mail.pas.earthlink.net with asmtp (SSLv3:RC4-MD5:128) (Exim 3.33 #1) id 19fwIH-00036n-00; Thu, 24 Jul 2003 23:43:10 -0700 Message-ID: <3F20D143.8F64F98B@mindspring.com> Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 23:42:11 -0700 From: Terry Lambert X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Shawn References: <20030723221109.GA790@dhcp01.pn.xcllnt.net> <1059051986.568.3.camel@CPE-65-26-140-154.kc.rr.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-ELNK-Trace: b1a02af9316fbb217a47c185c03b154d40683398e744b8a446b10823aff9bc8abd082649d431013693caf27dac41a8fd350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: fuword(), suword(), etc. X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 06:43:12 -0000 Shawn wrote: > On Thu, 2003-07-24 at 03:40, Terry Lambert wrote: > > It's actually unlikely that IBM will ever release enough documentation > > to get a full 64 bit Linux running on a PPC 970, let alone FreeBSD, > > and that you will be stuck with a 32 bit kernel that runs 64 bit apps, > > and which talks to IBM's internal undocumented glue on the bottom end > > while running in a virtual environment, such that the interfaces to > > that glue are not exposed in the source code they publish. > > That's very interesting to me as IBM has been rather forthcoming about > making sure everyone knows that the 32bit bridge was only temporary and > to not rely on it being there in the future. I would hope that would > indicate that they may be willing to release more informaation in the > future regarding this. Of course, what do I know? :p IBM doesn't want people running 32 bit code on their 64 bit hardware forever, and making it look bad, so they have stated publically that they intend to withdraw support for the 32 bit bridge in the future, I'll agree. As to whether this will really happen, or is just a scare tactic to prevent people from writing new code that depends on the bridge (which is supposed to be there only to provide support for old code), I don't know; I haven't worked for IBM for nearly 3 years now. Maybe Greg Lehey can comment. I do know that even if they remove the bridge, they are unlikely to provide enough documentation to boot and run natively on the hardware without having IBM code setting up the bus arbitration and other bits that are currently undocumented. -- Terry