Bigsur?

Bigsur?

[Andrew Wiley]

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Is there any way for a mere mortal like me to get his hands on a BCM91480B,
the evaulation board for Bigsur, and if so, how much would it cost? Right
now, it's not even on the Broadcom website, but I keep seeing mentions of it
on the internet as if many people are getting it somewhere.

Andrew Wiley

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Re: Bigsur?

[Ralf Baechle]

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 10:14:49PM -0500, Andrew Wiley wrote:

> Is there any way for a mere mortal like me to get his hands on a BCM91480B,
> the evaulation board for Bigsur, and if so, how much would it cost? Right
> now, it's not even on the Broadcom website, but I keep seeing mentions of it
> on the internet as if many people are getting it somewhere.

Occasionaly they're sold 2nd hand for example on ebay.  The board while
a very nice and complete software development platform has a healthy
4 digit dollar price if bought new.

Broadcom never made it easy to order these things.  The strategy seems to
be to contact their sales guys.

  Ralf

Re: Bigsur?

[Jon Fraser]

I think people that have them, have had them for a while.

You can still get, I believe, the bcm91125 and bcm91250.
http://www.broadcom.com/products/Data-Telecom-Networks/Communications-Processors/BCM91125E
How you actually order one, I don't know.  I assume you have to go to a
distributor.  

When I got a 1480 a year ago, it had to be built and took about 3
months. The internal transfer cost was very high.  So I really don't
think they are available anymore.  BUT, I don't work for that group.

Are people just looking for eval type boards with MIPS cpus?

Jon Fraser
(Not offical statments for Broadcom)


On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 20:14 -0700, Andrew Wiley wrote:
> Is there any way for a mere mortal like me to get his hands on a
> BCM91480B, the evaulation board for Bigsur, and if so, how much would
> it cost? Right now, it's not even on the Broadcom website, but I keep
> seeing mentions of it on the internet as if many people are getting it
> somewhere.
> 
> Andrew Wiley

Re: Bigsur?

[David Daney]

Jon Fraser wrote:
[...]
> Are people just looking for eval type boards with MIPS cpus?
> 

I think the answer to that is: Yes.

There are not really any commercially available MIPS based devices that 
can be used as a general purpose server/workstation.  Some people are 
working on old SGI Octanes, but there is really nothing available for 
currently produced processors.

David Daney


> Jon Fraser
> (Not offical statments for Broadcom)
> 
> 
> On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 20:14 -0700, Andrew Wiley wrote:
>> Is there any way for a mere mortal like me to get his hands on a
>> BCM91480B, the evaulation board for Bigsur, and if so, how much would
>> it cost? Right now, it's not even on the Broadcom website, but I keep
>> seeing mentions of it on the internet as if many people are getting it
>> somewhere.
>>
>> Andrew Wiley
> 
> 
> 
> 

Re: Bigsur?

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Mon, 18 May 2009, David Daney wrote:

> > Are people just looking for eval type boards with MIPS cpus?
> > 
> 
> I think the answer to that is: Yes.
> 
> There are not really any commercially available MIPS based devices that can be
> used as a general purpose server/workstation.  Some people are working on old
> SGI Octanes, but there is really nothing available for currently produced
> processors.

 I think it would be more precise to say that people are looking for 
decently-performing MIPS-based systems suitable for development.  Such 
that they do not start, say, a full three-stage GCC bootstrap and then 
they cannot let it finish because they have to relocate (e.g., my estimate 
is the task would take about a month on the fastest DECstation, assuming 
its maximum of 480MB of RAM installed).  And ones which can have local 
storage.  The BigSur (and some other Broadcom boards, like the SWARM) 
certainly fits here very well.  But people do not necessarily need all the 
fancy bits a development board usually has for use with special equipment, 
like a JTAG port, logic analyser pods, test points, etc.

  Maciej

Re: Bigsur?

[Markus Gothe]

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The SGI Quad Tezro and SGI Fuel and their MIPS-based server-line is  
still in use by institutions. However the fact is that the big  
business is in embedded devices nowadays with MIPS32/MIPS64. Albeit  
there does exist netbooks based on MIPS.

//Markus

On 18 May 2009, at 18:31, David Daney wrote:

> Jon Fraser wrote:
> [...]
>> Are people just looking for eval type boards with MIPS cpus?
>
> I think the answer to that is: Yes.
>
> There are not really any commercially available MIPS based devices  
> that can be used as a general purpose server/workstation.  Some  
> people are working on old SGI Octanes, but there is really nothing  
> available for currently produced processors.
>
> David Daney
>
>
>> Jon Fraser
>> (Not offical statments for Broadcom)
>> On Fri, 2009-05-15 at 20:14 -0700, Andrew Wiley wrote:
>>> Is there any way for a mere mortal like me to get his hands on a
>>> BCM91480B, the evaulation board for Bigsur, and if so, how much  
>>> would
>>> it cost? Right now, it's not even on the Broadcom website, but I  
>>> keep
>>> seeing mentions of it on the internet as if many people are  
>>> getting it
>>> somewhere.
>>>
>>> Andrew Wiley
>
>


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Re: Bigsur?

[Imre Kaloz]

On 2009.05.18. 18:13:35 Jon Fraser <jfraser@broadcom.com> wrote:

> I think people that have them, have had them for a while.
>
> You can still get, I believe, the bcm91125 and bcm91250.
> http://www.broadcom.com/products/Data-Telecom-Networks/Communications-Processors/BCM91125E
> How you actually order one, I don't know.  I assume you have to go to a
> distributor.
>
> When I got a 1480 a year ago, it had to be built and took about 3
> months. The internal transfer cost was very high.  So I really don't
> think they are available anymore.  BUT, I don't work for that group.
>
> Are people just looking for eval type boards with MIPS cpus?
>
> Jon Fraser
> (Not offical statments for Broadcom)

<personal rant>

Some people like me are Linux distro developers -- quite frequently the only way to get our
hands on boards to be able to support a platform is eBay.

This creates a funny "disturbance in the force".  At one end we are the ones willing to spend
not only our free time but personal incomes on supporting some platforms, yet we are the ones
who have the hardest times making this happen.

Sticking to your company for example, I was willing to spend the money on a Swarm a few years
ago. Broadcom ignored my mails, simply as I was an individual who wouldn't order thousands of
CPUs, "just" that board. So it took me quite some time and luck to hunt down a BCM91125F with
all it's limits..

On the other end there are companies who did order Xk CPUs and people who have access to the
eval boards. Most of these people don't give a damn about anything we do or care for, and are
happy to finish work and ignore the boards outside work hours -- not that I blame them for
doing so.

This is all again the old tale of money and possibilities vs time and willingness.

</personal rant>


Imre

Re: Bigsur?

[Jon Fraser]

On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 12:02 -0700, Imre Kaloz wrote:
> On 2009.05.18. 18:13:35 Jon Fraser <jfraser@broadcom.com> wrote:
> 
> > I think people that have them, have had them for a while.
> >
> > You can still get, I believe, the bcm91125 and bcm91250.
> > http://www.broadcom.com/products/Data-Telecom-Networks/Communications-Processors/BCM91125E
> > How you actually order one, I don't know.  I assume you have to go to a
> > distributor.
> >
> > When I got a 1480 a year ago, it had to be built and took about 3
> > months. The internal transfer cost was very high.  So I really don't
> > think they are available anymore.  BUT, I don't work for that group.
> >
> > Are people just looking for eval type boards with MIPS cpus?
> >
> > Jon Fraser
> > (Not offical statments for Broadcom)
> 
> <personal rant>
> 
> Some people like me are Linux distro developers -- quite frequently the only way to get our
> hands on boards to be able to support a platform is eBay.
> 
> This creates a funny "disturbance in the force".  At one end we are the ones willing to spend
> not only our free time but personal incomes on supporting some platforms, yet we are the ones
> who have the hardest times making this happen.
> 
> Sticking to your company for example, I was willing to spend the money on a Swarm a few years
> ago. Broadcom ignored my mails, simply as I was an individual who wouldn't order thousands of
> CPUs, "just" that board. So it took me quite some time and luck to hunt down a BCM91125F with
> all it's limits..
> 
> On the other end there are companies who did order Xk CPUs and people who have access to the
> eval boards. Most of these people don't give a damn about anything we do or care for, and are
> happy to finish work and ignore the boards outside work hours -- not that I blame them for
> doing so.
> 
> This is all again the old tale of money and possibilities vs time and willingness.
> 
> </personal rant>
> 
> 
> Imre
> 
Your points are well taken. 

FYI, just so people know, I had no experience with Broadcom prior to the
acquisition of  the start-up company for which I worked. After a couple
of years, they scuttled our group and I transferred to another local
division.  We don't use or have anything to do with the Sibyte
processors.


A few people have been talking about the lack of MIPS based boards and
what can be done about it.  It seems like there are three or more
categories.

1. Generic eval type boards to be used as cross development platforms.
	Probably primarily used for embedded development.

2. System type boards that can self-host.

3. Mission specific eval boards, which tend to be expensive, low volume,
   maybe hard to get boards of little generic interest.  Example:
   bigsur was developed for network processing.


Given that most MIPS processors end up in the embedded market, I assumed
that #1 would be most sought after, but I really know.

What kind of hardware configuration would help people out?


Jon

Re: Bigsur?

[Ralf Baechle]

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 12:13:35PM -0400, Jon Fraser wrote:

> I think people that have them, have had them for a while.
> 
> You can still get, I believe, the bcm91125 and bcm91250.
> http://www.broadcom.com/products/Data-Telecom-Networks/Communications-Processors/BCM91125E
> How you actually order one, I don't know.  I assume you have to go to a
> distributor.  

The usual story seems to be that people either turn pale when they hear
price on the order of $5,000 for a new board.  Or they don't hear back
at all because a sole Linux hacker doesn't sound like he's going to buy
a few thousand chips every quarter.

Adjust the numbers a little (some go as high as $35,000 a board!) and they
apply to virtually every company.

> When I got a 1480 a year ago, it had to be built and took about 3
> months. The internal transfer cost was very high.  So I really don't
> think they are available anymore.  BUT, I don't work for that group.
> 
> Are people just looking for eval type boards with MIPS cpus?

A clear yes.  In particular the Swarm and Big Sur boards which aside of
graphics are as close to an workstation or server board, are highly
sought after as indicated by usually high 2nd hand prices on ebay.
Even though far from new these boards are the backbone of the native
compile farms of several Linux distributions including Debian and the
native testing by various commercial and non-commercial software
developers including myself.  Aside of mostly SGI surplus workstations
the Sibyte boards are clearly the most popular among those who somehow
managed to get hold of them.

What this all boils down is that these aging platforms want a replacement
and a more accessible source.  But for the time being they are still
the best for many developers.

  Ralf

Re: Bigsur?

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Mon, 18 May 2009, Ralf Baechle wrote:

> A clear yes.  In particular the Swarm and Big Sur boards which aside of
> graphics are as close to an workstation or server board, are highly
> sought after as indicated by usually high 2nd hand prices on ebay.

 Even *including* graphics AFAIK -- there is apparently support for VGA 
console I/O for some chips in CFE.  Of course for that you have to get a 
universal classic PCI card, but that's not undoable and then you can 
attach a keyboard and a mouse to the onboard USB ports without taking a 
PCI slot even.  So yes, a full-featured graphics workstation if you like.

> Even though far from new these boards are the backbone of the native
> compile farms of several Linux distributions including Debian and the
> native testing by various commercial and non-commercial software
> developers including myself.  Aside of mostly SGI surplus workstations
> the Sibyte boards are clearly the most popular among those who somehow
> managed to get hold of them.

 Yes, invaluable for native builds and there is a considerable number of 
software packages which is not capable of being cross-compiled, or 
requires extreme contortions to be built this way, or if buildable with a 
reasonable effort, the functionality is limited.  Besides a three-stage 
GCC bootstrap is a good way of verifying the quality of the tool, never 
mind standard DejaGNU-based regression testing which although possible 
using cross-tools and a remote target, is awfully painful to be set up 
this way.

  Maciej

Re: Bigsur?

[Laurent GUERBY]

On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 23:47 +0100, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
>  Yes, invaluable for native builds and there is a considerable number of 
> software packages which is not capable of being cross-compiled, or 
> requires extreme contortions to be built this way, or if buildable with a 
> reasonable effort, the functionality is limited.  Besides a three-stage 
> GCC bootstrap is a good way of verifying the quality of the tool, never 
> mind standard DejaGNU-based regression testing which although possible 
> using cross-tools and a remote target, is awfully painful to be set up 
> this way.

For MIPS in the GCC Compile Farm http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/CompileFarm
(which is open to all free software, not limited to GCC) we
have two loongson-2f based netbooks on which a GCC bootstrap
and check is manageable.

Right now this farm is more oriented towards upstream userland
developpers debug/test cycles - they get access to 12 architectures when
they sign in. It's not really oriented towards porting
kernel/distributions or building distribution packages which is already
well covered by existing distribution farms and individual developpers
and those developpers should get priority on new hardware :).

This farm project is part of the Free Software Fundation France (a
french not-for-profit organization) effort to help free software
development and we accept hardware and hosting donations, and also
discounts to purchase commercial hardware when donations are not
possible and there is significant interest in one platform.

Sincerely,

Laurent

Re: Bigsur?

[Ralf Baechle]

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 02:17:20PM +0200, Laurent GUERBY wrote:

> On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 23:47 +0100, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
> >  Yes, invaluable for native builds and there is a considerable number of 
> > software packages which is not capable of being cross-compiled, or 
> > requires extreme contortions to be built this way, or if buildable with a 
> > reasonable effort, the functionality is limited.  Besides a three-stage 
> > GCC bootstrap is a good way of verifying the quality of the tool, never 
> > mind standard DejaGNU-based regression testing which although possible 
> > using cross-tools and a remote target, is awfully painful to be set up 
> > this way.
> 
> For MIPS in the GCC Compile Farm http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/CompileFarm
> (which is open to all free software, not limited to GCC) we
> have two loongson-2f based netbooks on which a GCC bootstrap
> and check is manageable.
> 
> Right now this farm is more oriented towards upstream userland
> developpers debug/test cycles - they get access to 12 architectures when
> they sign in. It's not really oriented towards porting
> kernel/distributions or building distribution packages which is already
> well covered by existing distribution farms and individual developpers
> and those developpers should get priority on new hardware :).
> 
> This farm project is part of the Free Software Fundation France (a
> french not-for-profit organization) effort to help free software
> development and we accept hardware and hosting donations, and also
> discounts to purchase commercial hardware when donations are not
> possible and there is significant interest in one platform.

That I think is a great solution for people who need short term access
but doesn't really solve the fundamental problem that hardware with
sufficient punch for efficient native development isn't easily available.

  Ralf

Re: Bigsur?

[Andrew Sharp]

On Tue, 19 May 2009 05:53:10 -0700 Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org>
wrote:

> On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 02:17:20PM +0200, Laurent GUERBY wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2009-05-18 at 23:47 +0100, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
> > >  Yes, invaluable for native builds and there is a considerable
> > > number of software packages which is not capable of being
> > > cross-compiled, or requires extreme contortions to be built this
> > > way, or if buildable with a reasonable effort, the functionality
> > > is limited.  Besides a three-stage GCC bootstrap is a good way of
> > > verifying the quality of the tool, never mind standard
> > > DejaGNU-based regression testing which although possible using
> > > cross-tools and a remote target, is awfully painful to be set up
> > > this way.
> > 
> > For MIPS in the GCC Compile Farm http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/CompileFarm
> > (which is open to all free software, not limited to GCC) we
> > have two loongson-2f based netbooks on which a GCC bootstrap
> > and check is manageable.
> > 
> > Right now this farm is more oriented towards upstream userland
> > developpers debug/test cycles - they get access to 12 architectures
> > when they sign in. It's not really oriented towards porting
> > kernel/distributions or building distribution packages which is
> > already well covered by existing distribution farms and individual
> > developpers and those developpers should get priority on new
> > hardware :).
> > 
> > This farm project is part of the Free Software Fundation France (a
> > french not-for-profit organization) effort to help free software
> > development and we accept hardware and hosting donations, and also
> > discounts to purchase commercial hardware when donations are not
> > possible and there is significant interest in one platform.
> 
> That I think is a great solution for people who need short term access
> but doesn't really solve the fundamental problem that hardware with
> sufficient punch for efficient native development isn't easily
> available.

Question: are machines that must be NFS-root and tftp booted acceptable
or not acceptable for such work?  The machines in question would 750MHz
Sibyte 1250s, so 3 Gigabit ports natively, and 2 serial consoles.

Cheers,

a

Re: Bigsur?

[Ralf Baechle]

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 11:01:05AM -0700, Andrew Sharp wrote:

> Question: are machines that must be NFS-root and tftp booted acceptable
> or not acceptable for such work?  The machines in question would 750MHz
> Sibyte 1250s, so 3 Gigabit ports natively, and 2 serial consoles.

For many uses that will be decent but there are still a few things out
there that don't quite work the same way on NFS that they do on other
filesystems and that tends to break some software and autoconf-like
things.  I'd probably give such a config a 90% score - good for most stuff.

  Ralf

Re: Bigsur?

[Manuel Lauss]

On Wed, 20 May 2009 20:16:18 +0100
Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org> wrote:

> On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 11:01:05AM -0700, Andrew Sharp wrote:
> 
> > Question: are machines that must be NFS-root and tftp booted acceptable
> > or not acceptable for such work?  The machines in question would 750MHz
> > Sibyte 1250s, so 3 Gigabit ports natively, and 2 serial consoles.
> 
> For many uses that will be decent but there are still a few things out
> there that don't quite work the same way on NFS that they do on other
> filesystems and that tends to break some software and autoconf-like
> things.  I'd probably give such a config a 90% score - good for most stuff.

I rebuilt a whole Gentoo system from scratch natively over an NFSroot--
it was actually very painless; add distcc and the time to wait is a
lot shorter.

	Manuel Lauss

Re: Bigsur?

[Laurent GUERBY]

On Wed, 2009-05-20 at 21:22 +0200, Manuel Lauss wrote:
> On Wed, 20 May 2009 20:16:18 +0100
> Ralf Baechle <ralf@linux-mips.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 11:01:05AM -0700, Andrew Sharp wrote:
> > 
> > > Question: are machines that must be NFS-root and tftp booted acceptable
> > > or not acceptable for such work?  The machines in question would 750MHz
> > > Sibyte 1250s, so 3 Gigabit ports natively, and 2 serial consoles.
> > 
> > For many uses that will be decent but there are still a few things out
> > there that don't quite work the same way on NFS that they do on other
> > filesystems and that tends to break some software and autoconf-like
> > things.  I'd probably give such a config a 90% score - good for most stuff.
> 
> I rebuilt a whole Gentoo system from scratch natively over an NFSroot--
> it was actually very painless; add distcc and the time to wait is a
> lot shorter.

One of the farm machine is a Marvell sheevaplug with root over NFS
(gentoo based with marvell.git kernel) and it does multi user
compilations all day long with no issue so far.

Laurent

Re: Bigsur?

[Ralf Baechle]

On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 10:21:09PM +0200, Laurent GUERBY wrote:

> > I rebuilt a whole Gentoo system from scratch natively over an NFSroot--
> > it was actually very painless; add distcc and the time to wait is a
> > lot shorter.
> 
> One of the farm machine is a Marvell sheevaplug with root over NFS
> (gentoo based with marvell.git kernel) and it does multi user
> compilations all day long with no issue so far.

For your entertainment:

  http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9629799/apdxa.htm
  http://www.time-travellers.org/shane/papers/NFS_considered_harmful.html

NFSv4 fixes alot of issues but is only slowly being adopted.  Also iSCSI
might be worth trying; it would completely solve all the NFS issues.

  Ralf