Re: [PATCH 0/2] Remove SMTC Support

["Kevin D. Kissell" <kevink@paralogos.com>]

On 04/08/2014 07:44 AM, Ralf Baechle wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 08, 2014 at 11:59:08AM +0100, Markos Chandras wrote:
>
>> This patchset removes the MIPS SMTC support.
> While not really a fix I've applied this to my 3.15 fix branch.  At least
> it will avoid us having to fix it up for 3.15 :-)
>
> That said, SMTC was a remarkable hack and ingenious proof of the MT
> architecture.
Sigh. I was rather proud of it.  If it's being excised (and I don't 
begrudge people the right to deprecate it), I guess it means I can 
unsubscribe from the mailing list, as supporting MT hacks was the main 
reason I hung around at all after leaving MIPS.
> Still a sore spot is CONFIG_MIPS_MT_FPAFF with all its uglyness it
> scatters over the tree, in particular the wrapper around the syscall
> entry point.  I wonder if nowadays with the work that's been done on
> supporting inhomogenous SMP systems (ARM biglittle) there's now a
> better way to handle this sort of issue.
Even at the time, I'd identified a cleaner way to deal with this sort of 
thing, but the maintainer for the code in question wouldn't give me the 
time of day, so I solved the problem as well as the politics of Linux 
allowed.  As I understand it, the MIPS FP Affinity hack still 
outperformed some rather more complex solutions that contemporary 
inhomogeneous (is that different from heterogeneous?) MT machines (e.g. 
Niagara) were using.

/K.