Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 03:50:09 -0800 (PST) From: Jason Evans <jasone@canonware.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: Chuck Robey <chuckr@glue.umd.edu>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Beginning SPARC port Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.95.971211071819.19030S-100000@paladio> In-Reply-To: <25493.881829472@time.cdrom.com>
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On Thu, 11 Dec 1997, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > For the record, I doubt that adding support for the earlier SPARCs is > going to be as trivial as everyone expects, and I don't expect Jason > Evans' bosses to put too much effort into this either considering that > the already-sold hardware is not very important to their bottom > line. :) You're right. The Ultra is first and foremost in importance. As an onlooker, given a choice between one port or the other, I'd choose the Ultra port, because it will push the limits of what FreeBSD can do, whereas supporting older machines will simply make those machines useful for a while longer, which NetBSD apparently already does. > Remember that we *had* a SPARC port at one stage but it died > for lack of attention (I don't even think anyone even has the bits > around anymore), so if something's not done directly by Jason then I'm > a bit skeptical about it happening at all. If left completely on my own, the UltraAX and UltraAXi based systems are the only systems that will be targeted for the port. However, it seems that there are a number of people who are interested in seeing older hardware work. If these people draft off my efforts, I will be more than happy to help in any way that I can (which includes integrating support into the port, finding info, etc.), so long as it doesn't conflict with my primary goals, and doesn't take up huge amounts of my time. My limited personal scope still leaves a huge project at hand. To try to tackle all of the SPARC processors would be very difficult. To make matters worse, it seems that Sun's various MMUs are targets in and of themselves. Here's a light of hope for all of you wanting to run this port someday: Sun's boards are rapidly descending into the price range of upper-end Pentium II boards. The system I'm targeting for the port is just beyond the range of what I consider a reasonable price for personal purchase. The next board they release (coming relatively soon now) will be completely reasonable, as compared to the price/performance of Pentium II boards/cpus. These boards have integrated SCSI, PCI, and ethernet. The memory bandwidth is almost 3x that of P6 machines. They're really, really cool. When this port is done, my Intel boxes are going bye bye. =) Jason Jason Evans Email: [jasone@canonware.com] Home phone: [(650) 856-8204] Quote: ["Invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" - Thomas Edison]
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