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Date:      Sat, 09 May 2020 22:03:29 +0000
From:      bugzilla-noreply@freebsd.org
To:        powerpc@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   [Bug 246194] math/blis: pacify portlint, add test target, optimize for power9
Message-ID:  <bug-246194-25139-Ty8PJeSx9D@https.bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/>
In-Reply-To: <bug-246194-25139@https.bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/>
References:  <bug-246194-25139@https.bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/>

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https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3D246194

--- Comment #2 from Piotr Kubaj <pkubaj@FreeBSD.org> ---
FreeBSD supports all IBM POWER chips from the first PPC970 (in Macs G5) up =
to
the latest POWER9 and also Freescale's ppc64 chips found in embedded device=
s.

So yes, optimizing for POWER9 will make it more useful to POWER9 users. It =
will
also make this port useless on all earlier generations, but:
1) since nothing depends on this port, optimizing to POWER9 will only be
relevant to people directly using this port on powerpc64 older than POWER9,=
 not
to someone using some reverse dependency (because there are none),
2) I think people using software strictly for scientific computations tend =
to
use the latest available hardware because of power usage improvements. I do=
n't
think anyone will use their old PowerMac G5 with this port.

Regarding complicating this port, on e.g. ARM we build generic binaries, but
per https://github.com/flame/blis/blob/master/config_registry, there are two
armv7-optimized variants and three aarch64-optimized variants, depending on=
 the
actual CPU. For amd64, there are overall 11 possible variants (optimized for
specific CPUs).

This is why I proposed this port getting flavours, that would make it possi=
ble
for users to install their preferred version.

If you ask about POWER and BGQ in the above link, AFAIK this is IBM Blue Ge=
ne
which uses custom PowerPC chips and support for it is not available in Free=
BSD
anyway.

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