From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by oss.sgi.com (8.11.2/8.11.3) id g2Q8A4v10025 for linux-mips-outgoing; Tue, 26 Mar 2002 00:10:04 -0800 Received: from mx2.mips.com (ftp.mips.com [206.31.31.227]) by oss.sgi.com (8.11.2/8.11.3) with SMTP id g2Q89uq10017 for ; Tue, 26 Mar 2002 00:09:56 -0800 Received: from newman.mips.com (ns-dmz [206.31.31.225]) by mx2.mips.com (8.9.3/8.9.0) with ESMTP id AAA22183; Tue, 26 Mar 2002 00:11:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from copfs01.mips.com (copfs01 [192.168.205.101]) by newman.mips.com (8.9.3/8.9.0) with ESMTP id AAA07969; Tue, 26 Mar 2002 00:11:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from mips.com (copsun17 [192.168.205.27]) by copfs01.mips.com (8.11.4/8.9.0) with ESMTP id g2Q8AwA06389; Tue, 26 Mar 2002 09:10:58 +0100 (MET) Message-ID: <3CA02D11.B011962@mips.com> Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 09:10:57 +0100 From: Carsten Langgaard X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.79 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.7 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Kevin D. Kissell" CC: Johannes Stezenbach , linux-mips@oss.sgi.com Subject: Re: Mips16 toolchain? References: <20020325135834.GA1736@convergence.de> <00e901c1d40d$a257a200$0deca8c0@Ulysses> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-15 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-linux-mips@oss.sgi.com Precedence: bulk "Kevin D. Kissell" wrote: > > I saw that the algorithmics toolchain (which Dominic Sweetman > > offered to the Linux/MIPS community here a month ago) claims > > to have full support for the mips16 instruction set. > > > > My questions: > > Does anyone here have experiences with mips16 and/or with the > > algorithmics toolchain? > > Yes. Both Algorithmics and Green Hills embedded > tool chains support it reasonably well. GHS has no > Linux target, though. Algorithmics has been working > on one, but I'm not sure what it's current status is. > > > Is there working support for mips16 in any other gcc-version? > > Cygnus (now part of Red Hat) did the very first MIPS16 > support for gcc, most of which found its way into the > main development/maintence stream. But apparently > not enough of it, based on your experience. > > > How about gcc-3.x from CVS? > > No data there. > > > Any other comments or recommendations regarding mips16? > > MIPS16 requires more than just gcc support. > One needs a binutils that can distinguish a MIPS16 > binary module (or function if you want to be fancy and > mix/match within modules) from a MIPS32/64 module > and perform fixups so that the right selections are made > between JAL and JALX on function invocations. > If you've got that, you should not need a seperate > MIPS16 libc. > > To correctly support MIPS16, the Linux kernel does > need to be tweaked in those cases where user-mode > instructions are decoded and interpreted, as in > arch/mips/kernel/branch.c and unaligned.c. > I believe that code has been prototyped somewhere, > but it's not yet in any commonly used repository to > the best of my knowledge. If you avoid throwing > executing non-instructions, performing unaligned > accesses, etc, you should be able to tiptoe around > that deficiency. I don't think you need to tiptoe to get it working :-; It should be easy to avoid non-instructions, unaligned accesses and co. We have a few MIPS16 applications running using Algorithmics compiler and a static non-PIC libc. > > Regards, > > Kevin K. -- _ _ ____ ___ Carsten Langgaard Mailto:carstenl@mips.com |\ /|||___)(___ MIPS Denmark Direct: +45 4486 5527 | \/ ||| ____) Lautrupvang 4B Switch: +45 4486 5555 TECHNOLOGIES 2750 Ballerup Fax...: +45 4486 5556 Denmark http://www.mips.com