From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (cthulhu.engr.sgi.com [192.26.80.2]) by neteng.engr.sgi.com (950413.SGI.8.6.12/960327.SGI.AUTOCF) via ESMTP id NAA06606; Tue, 23 Apr 1996 13:27:03 -0700 Return-Path: Received: by cthulhu.engr.sgi.com (950511.SGI.8.6.12.PATCH526/911001.SGI) for linux-list id NAA16317; Tue, 23 Apr 1996 13:26:58 -0700 Received: from yon.engr.sgi.com by cthulhu.engr.sgi.com via ESMTP (950511.SGI.8.6.12.PATCH526/911001.SGI) for id NAA16308; Tue, 23 Apr 1996 13:26:56 -0700 Received: by yon.engr.sgi.com (950413.SGI.8.6.12/940406.SGI.AUTO) for linux id NAA00059; Tue, 23 Apr 1996 13:26:54 -0700 From: ariel@yon.engr.sgi.com (Ariel Faigon) Message-Id: <199604232026.NAA00059@yon.engr.sgi.com> Subject: What target (was David ...) To: linux@yon.engr.sgi.com Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 13:26:53 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <199604231951.MAA01292@titian> from "Mike McDonald" at Apr 23, 96 12:51:24 pm Reply-To: ariel@cthulhu.engr.sgi.com Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc. X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 ME5a] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux@cthulhu.engr.sgi.com Precedence: bulk Mike asked (not a dumb Q, BTW): > > A dumb question, what exactly is the purpose of porting Linux to >SGI/Mips boxes? > Looks like there are many opinions. I don't care as long as we manage to do this port. Whatever we port it to (and the wider the port is) SGI is going to benefit tremendously. You may read my Linux pages (http://info.engr/~ariel/linux) to understand why my personal conviction (and others) is so strong. Some of the nice things about Linux are: 1) It can work from RAM (virtual disk), So it follows that it is easily ROMable and embeddable (much more so than IRIX) I have developed embedded apps for several years in my past and I can tell you that my life would have been infinitely easier had I been able to develop in a Linux env. Only the thought of having the same env on the host and the target is revolutionary by itself (and possible!) 2) It has a small footprint so naturally it is a good candidate for embedded market. 3) It has a common single source code for 32-bit and 64-bit machines (Alpha). So we shouldn't think of this as an "either/or" proposition. P.S. gcc doesn't have support for 64 bit MIPS 27 ISA, I guess, but nobody is stopping us from using our compilers (as well as gcc at our convenience). -- Peace, Ariel