From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 17 13:18:27 2004 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 4BD2E16A4CF for ; Wed, 17 Mar 2004 13:18:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from smtp1.server.rpi.edu (smtp1.server.rpi.edu [128.113.2.1]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E4ED843D1D for ; Wed, 17 Mar 2004 13:18:26 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from drosih@rpi.edu) Received: from [128.113.24.47] (gilead.netel.rpi.edu [128.113.24.47]) by smtp1.server.rpi.edu (8.12.8/8.12.8) with ESMTP id i2HLIPHB008607; Wed, 17 Mar 2004 16:18:25 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: drosih@mail.rpi.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200403161312.00556.wes@softweyr.com> References: <20040315000944.GA93356@xor.obsecurity.org> <200403150134.i2F1Y5ew004366@dungeon.home> <200403161312.00556.wes@softweyr.com> Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 16:18:24 -0500 To: Wes Peters , Stephen McKay , current@freebsd.org From: Garance A Drosihn Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" X-Scanned-By: CanIt (www . canit . ca) Subject: Re: HEADS UP! MAJOR change to FreeBSD/sparc64 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: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 21:18:27 -0000 At 1:12 PM -0800 3/16/04, Wes Peters wrote: >On Sunday 14 March 2004 05:34 pm, Stephen McKay wrote: > > > If the intention is to use the sparc conversion is as the > > template for architectures I care about then now is the > > first time I can contribute to improving the process. > >sparc64 is, afaik, the last 64 bit architecture to change >over to 64BTT. PowerPC is still 32-bTT, and I think that's a 64-bit architecture. But the people working on that have talked about switching to 64-bTT before PowerPC becomes a tier-1 platform. >The 32 bit architectures don't matter because the likelihood >of them surviving until when 32BTT becomes a problem is nil. >(That's probably true of the sparc64 architecture too, but >keeping sparc64 in line with the rest of the 64-bitters is >a good idea.) I should also note that a big reason I wanted sparc64 to be 64-bTT is that it's a big-endian architecture, so bugs in the handling of time_t will show up differently on it than on ia64 or amd64. By moving sparc64 to 64-bTT right now, we will notice bugs right now that we might not notice on the other platforms for quite some time -- even though the bug would exist on all 64-bTT platforms. [I may have mentioned that before. I forget if I did] -- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@gilead.netel.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu