MIPS port kickoff meeting

MIPS port kickoff meeting

[Ariel Faigon]

Hi LinuxMIPSies,

This is becoming real. Please mark your calendars.

We have Jamaica in B10U, which holds 12 people, from 4-5pm
on Wednesday April 24th.

I know it may conflict with someone's schedule but p l e a s e
try your best to show up.

THE MEETING HAS ONE MAIN GOAL:

	To ensure that when David Miller lands at SGI he wastes
	zero time on ramping up.  We can do a lot until he comes.

The idea Jim Barton, Larry and I had is:
	1) Office + two Indys (connected via a serial line to support
	   gdb remote protocol) already waiting, phone, email etc.
	2) Development tools installed
	3) The latest linux sources on the machine. After trying to
	   compile them and see how smoothly this goes.
	4) This may require the most work:
	   A 99% stripped down IRIX or set-top box thing that is
	   basically only the device drivers to boot and do:
		"hello console"
		"hello network"
		"hello disk"
		"hello keyboard"
		"hello console graphics"

	Given all this, David can boot Linux in a few days I guess :-)


Agenda:
	1) Quick round table: introduce everyone
	2) Sort out some details:
		Are we going for a 64-bit kernel?
		What MIPS instruction set should we support
		[e.g. 3K is important for the embedded market]
		What dev tools should we use?
		elf/coff stabs/dwarf gcc/cc etc. etc.
	4) Suggest more ways to accelerate David Miller's ramp up
	5) List action items
	6) Get volunteers for help on the above

Lastly, since David's Acceptance is final.  I think it is time
to put David himself on this mailing list too, he certainly has
some ideas on how to help us help him.

-- 
Peace, Ariel

Re: MIPS port kickoff meeting

[Alistair Lambie]

On Apr 19,  5:22pm, Ariel Faigon wrote:
> Subject: MIPS port kickoff meeting
> Hi LinuxMIPSies,
>
> This is becoming real. Please mark your calendars.
>
> We have Jamaica in B10U, which holds 12 people, from 4-5pm
> on Wednesday April 24th.
>
> I know it may conflict with someone's schedule but p l e a s e
> try your best to show up.
>
Umm...could be a problem.  It's a holiday here in New Zealand, otherwise :-)


>
> Agenda:
> 	1) Quick round table: introduce everyone
> 	2) Sort out some details:
> 		Are we going for a 64-bit kernel?
> 		What MIPS instruction set should we support
> 		[e.g. 3K is important for the embedded market]
> 		What dev tools should we use?
> 		elf/coff stabs/dwarf gcc/cc etc. etc.

My 2c worth:
   1. We should definitely do 32bit, probably 64bit as well.  There is a
      big base of R3k machines out there that are going to start getting
      left behind soon.
   2. We need to go for lowest common denominator (MIPS I) and then add
      conditionals (in the low level bits) later.  The c code can of course be
      compiled as the user wants it.
   3. We need to support machines that don't have a graphics head (servers).
      This requires serial drivers.
   4. We should really tie this project in with what is happening at
      http://lena.fnet.fr/.  Their goal has been to get Linux on ARCS systems
      running little endian, but there is a need for a MIPS port for MIPS (the
      company) R3k machines which needs to be big endian.
   5. Should we use the 'milo' bootloader?

	6.
> 	4) Suggest more ways to accelerate David Miller's ramp up
> 	5) List action items
> 	6) Get volunteers for help on the above
>
Probably not much I can do from here.  Maybe some Beta testing a bit further
down the track (test for bit inversion in the southern hemisphere :-) ).

I still have an interest in getting Linux on to the old MIPS boxes, so maybe
with a few quick hacks after David has worked his magic I can get this to
happen.  I suspect that this would also help CSD out as I know they still get
support calls from people who have these machines and are falling all over the
place with the development environment (svr3, bsd43, svr4).  Often they are
little more than people playing and having a Linux offering may be the best way
to get them out of our hair.  Also, RISC/os is getting a bit long in the tooth
now and there are still some nasty little bugs in it, often comms related which
more often than not is what the person wanted it for!

One thing that would be nice is for someone to minute the meeting to the list
so that those of us who can't attend can see what's happening.  I guess it is
also a good way of documenting the progress as things move along!

Cheers, Alistair

-- 
Alistair Lambie					    alambie@wellington.sgi.com
Silicon Graphics New Zealand				  SGI Voicemail: 56791
Level 5, Walsh Wrightson Tower,				    Ph: +64-4-802 1455
94-96 Dixon St, Wellington, NZ			  	   Fax: +64-4-802 1459

Re: MIPS port kickoff meeting

[Greg Chesson]

There are US Gov't customers for Linux on SGI boxes who require
64-bit OS.  So, let's support tho 32-bit ARCS boxes without compromising
opportunities to sell new boxes (with 64-bit Linux).

g

Re: MIPS port kickoff meeting

[Larry McVoy]

Greg said:
: There are US Gov't customers for Linux on SGI boxes who require
: 64-bit OS.  So, let's support tho 32-bit ARCS boxes without compromising
: opportunities to sell new boxes (with 64-bit Linux).

We definitely want to do this.  And I don't want to do anything to derail
this because I want this badly.  And what I'm about to say does not imply 
that we don't do 64bit - I want both.  And it should be easy to do both.

One reason for thinking small, however, is that we could finesse the whole
Linux vs IRIX issue by raising awareness that Linux on MIPs could be a
really nice solution for the embedded market.  I personally would love
to see a full page in IEEE times in which MIPS announces the availablity
of embedded Linux for MIPs chips.  This may be the quickest path to getting
Linux embraced internally.  I'm pretty sure that Cygnus would be interested
in signing up for support for such a platform - that is a big part of their
business.  And I think that R3K is still the volume chip in the embedded
market, so we want that to work.

Thoughts?

Re: MIPS port kickoff meeting

[Larry McVoy]

Arrg, ignore my message and read Jim's - he said it better.  I gotta learn
to read all my mail before firing off replies.

Re: MIPS port kickoff meeting

[David S. Miller]

   From: "Greg Chesson" <greg@xtp.engr.sgi.com>
   Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 09:39:29 -0700

   There are US Gov't customers for Linux on SGI boxes who require
   64-bit OS.  So, let's support tho 32-bit ARCS boxes without
   compromising opportunities to sell new boxes (with 64-bit Linux).

Like I said I'll do the 32-bit port and work from there based upon how
I feel after that.

Remember I've got one kernel here which works on every 32-bit CPU type
Sun has every put into a box with almost no performance loss.  I can
do it too for MIPS and I will.  The goal being that some day I will be
able to slap the same kernel image into an INDY as I can for an ONYX
and a LEGO.

And also, I will design it such that, as in the traditional Linux
kernel model, you can config all this shit out and get the streamlined
minimal kernel which only works with a certain configuation. (MM code,
config it out because this is for an embedded system)

Later,
David S. Miller
davem@caip.rutgers.edu

Re: MIPS port kickoff meeting

[Greg Chesson]

agreed.
we should begin with the version of Linux that is the most natural
port for you.  The other versions can come later.  Note however that
Lego may prefer a 64-bit kernel.

g