PowerMac vs. Intel for PowerPC Development Host

PowerMac vs. Intel for PowerPC Development Host

[brian.auld]

A while back I wrote an email to this list regarding development kit
suggestions. Based mainly on feedback from this email, I am currently moving
in the Intel/ELDK direction.

Out of all the feedback I received, only one person suggested developing on
a PowerMac based Linux box, thus eliminating the need for cross-compiling. I
have become more interested in this option as some people in our company
have noted that cross-compiling embedded linux presented problems on past
projects when it came to building certain 3rd party applications.

In the Intel vs. Mac debate for a linux development host for embedded ppc
development, if money was not an issue, would I get more PowerMac
recommendations??

Thanks,

-- Brian


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Re: PowerMac vs. Intel for PowerPC Development Host

[Mark Hatle]

brian.auld@adic.com wrote:
> A while back I wrote an email to this list regarding development kit
> suggestions. Based mainly on feedback from this email, I am currently moving
> in the Intel/ELDK direction.
>
> Out of all the feedback I received, only one person suggested developing on
> a PowerMac based Linux box, thus eliminating the need for cross-compiling. I
> have become more interested in this option as some people in our company
> have noted that cross-compiling embedded linux presented problems on past
> projects when it came to building certain 3rd party applications.

I say regardless of the host architecture you want to cross compile unless your
host architecture IS the same as your target architecture.  (Yes you can
"cross-compile" from powerpc to powerpc or ia32 to ia32.)

Our product is setup for cross compiling and/or "native" compiling.. but we do
not support a customer building on their "host" OS and just copying the
resulting binary over and running it.. library and compiler incompatabilities
are the at the top of the "reasons not to do that" list.

> In the Intel vs. Mac debate for a linux development host for embedded ppc
> development, if money was not an issue, would I get more PowerMac
> recommendations??

I have both a Mac and PC on my desk.  I use whichever is better at doing what I
want at the moment.  If you are picking a pre-built development environment you
will have limits as to your host architecture (host OS)..  If you are building
your own just pick whatever you feel more comfortable with.

(FYI I routinely use Solaris 8, x86 (Dual Athlon) w/ RH 7.3 and a Titanium
PowerBook w/ YDL on it for development.. and due to the cross compiling I just
migrate my target from machine to machine via NFS and can do whatever I need to.)

The "host" architecture and OS should really not be a factor in your embedded
development decision..  as far as I'm concerned all hosts are equally broken.. :)

--Mark


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Re: PowerMac vs. Intel for PowerPC Development Host

[Kenneth Johansson]

On Wed, 2003-02-19 at 22:52, brian.auld@adic.com wrote:

> Out of all the feedback I received, only one person suggested developing on
> a PowerMac based Linux box, thus eliminating the need for cross-compiling. I
> have become more interested in this option as some people in our company
> have noted that cross-compiling embedded linux presented problems on past
> projects when it came to building certain 3rd party applications.

Compiling on a powerpc platform dose not automatically make things just
work you may have to build a cross compiler anyway depending on what
bugs in the target you have to work around.

Some programs is simpler to build native for sure but on the few times I
resorted to that I could build on the development card. It's nice to
have more than one platform for other reasons like when things do not
work you have something to compare against.

--
Kenneth Johansson
Ericsson AB                       Tel: +46 8 719 70 20
Tellusborgsvägen  94              Fax: +46 8 719 29 45
126 25 Stockholm                  ken@switchboard.ericsson.se


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Re: PowerMac vs. Intel for PowerPC Development Host

[bob piatek]

I've been using a Mac running the Yellow Dog Linux distribution and
have not had any problems.

The plusses are you don't have to worry about cross-compiling or
setting up GDB in a cross platform environment.  It is just a couple
more things you don't have to worry about.

As a bonus, many of your host's command line tools can be NFS mounted
on your embedded system and run directly without having to have special
versions for your target.

So... no negatives but a few plusses.


Bob

fishcamp engineering
105 W. Clark Ave.
Orcutt, CA  93455

http://www.fishcamp.com
TEL: 805-937-6365
FAX: 805-937-6252



On Wednesday, February 19, 2003, at 01:52 PM, brian.auld@adic.com wrote:

>
> A while back I wrote an email to this list regarding development kit
> suggestions. Based mainly on feedback from this email, I am currently
> moving
> in the Intel/ELDK direction.
>
> Out of all the feedback I received, only one person suggested
> developing on
> a PowerMac based Linux box, thus eliminating the need for
> cross-compiling. I
> have become more interested in this option as some people in our
> company
> have noted that cross-compiling embedded linux presented problems on
> past
> projects when it came to building certain 3rd party applications.
>
> In the Intel vs. Mac debate for a linux development host for embedded
> ppc
> development, if money was not an issue, would I get more PowerMac
> recommendations??
>
> Thanks,
>
> -- Brian
>
>
>
>
>


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Re: PowerMac vs. Intel for PowerPC Development Host

[Wolfgang Denk]

In message <AB83137E-4459-11D7-868F-000393D6CBAE@fishcamp.com> you wrote:
>
> I've been using a Mac running the Yellow Dog Linux distribution and
> have not had any problems.

This depends on your target processor.

> The plusses are you don't have to worry about cross-compiling or
> setting up GDB in a cross platform environment.  It is just a couple
> more things you don't have to worry about.

This depends on your target processor.

> As a bonus, many of your host's command line tools can be NFS mounted
> on your embedded system and run directly without having to have special
> versions for your target.

This depends on your target processor.

For example, with MPC8xx or IBM 4xx systems which don't  have  a  FPU
and  small  cache  line  sizes  you  may want special versions of the
libraries, and a  special  configuration  of  GCC  that  automgically
enables "-msoft-float" etc.

Best regards,

Wolfgang Denk

--
Software Engineering:  Embedded and Realtime Systems,  Embedded Linux
Phone: (+49)-8142-4596-87  Fax: (+49)-8142-4596-88  Email: wd@denx.de
See us @ Embedded World, Nuremberg, Feb 18-20, Hall 12.0 Booth 12-442

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Re: PowerMac vs. Intel for PowerPC Development Host

[Chris Wedgwood]

On Wed, Feb 19, 2003 at 01:52:58PM -0800, brian.auld@adic.com wrote:

> In the Intel vs. Mac debate for a linux development host for
> embedded ppc development, if money was not an issue, would I get
> more PowerMac recommendations??

Despire what Apple and a few other people claim, Intel solutions are
faster in terms of compile times, and if money was no barrier, then
Intel solutions are potentially *much* faster.


  --cw


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Re: PowerMac vs. Intel for PowerPC Development Host

[Paul Mackerras]

Chris Wedgwood writes:
>
> On Wed, Feb 19, 2003 at 01:52:58PM -0800, brian.auld@adic.com wrote:
>
> > In the Intel vs. Mac debate for a linux development host for
> > embedded ppc development, if money was not an issue, would I get
> > more PowerMac recommendations??
>
> Despire what Apple and a few other people claim, Intel solutions are
> faster in terms of compile times, and if money was no barrier, then
> Intel solutions are potentially *much* faster.

As an actual data point: my measurements show that a dual 1GHz G4
powermac is more than twice as fast at compiling PPC kernels as a
1.7GHz P4 (single cpu).

You can't fairly compare compiling a PPC kernel on a PPC box with
compiling an x86 kernel on an x86 box.  GCC does more work compiling
for PPC than for x86.

Paul.

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Re: PowerMac vs. Intel for PowerPC Development Host

[Eugene Surovegin]

At 05:22 PM 2/19/2003, Paul Mackerras wrote:

>Chris Wedgwood writes:
> >
> > On Wed, Feb 19, 2003 at 01:52:58PM -0800, brian.auld@adic.com wrote:
> >
> > > In the Intel vs. Mac debate for a linux development host for
> > > embedded ppc development, if money was not an issue, would I get
> > > more PowerMac recommendations??
> >
> > Despire what Apple and a few other people claim, Intel solutions are
> > faster in terms of compile times, and if money was no barrier, then
> > Intel solutions are potentially *much* faster.
>
>As an actual data point: my measurements show that a dual 1GHz G4
>powermac is more than twice as fast at compiling PPC kernels as a
>1.7GHz P4 (single cpu).
>
>You can't fairly compare compiling a PPC kernel on a PPC box with
>compiling an x86 kernel on an x86 box.  GCC does more work compiling
>for PPC than for x86.

My 5 cents :)

I tried to compile the _same_ PPC kernel for one of boards (440GP based).

Cross compiling on PIII 755Mhz running SuSE        - 16 min
Cross compiling on G4 PowerBook 1Ghz running YDL   - 6 min

Eugene


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Re: PowerMac vs. Intel for PowerPC Development Host

[Chris Wedgwood]

On Thu, Feb 20, 2003 at 12:22:52PM +1100, Paul Mackerras wrote:

> As an actual data point: my measurements show that a dual 1GHz G4
> powermac is more than twice as fast at compiling PPC kernels as a
> 1.7GHz P4 (single cpu).

Wow... that's *much* better that I would have guessed.  Is the
compiler the same for each?

> You can't fairly compare compiling a PPC kernel on a PPC box with
> compiling an x86 kernel on an x86 box.  GCC does more work compiling
> for PPC than for x86.

I wasn't trying to compare fairly, mostly get the lowest possible
compile time.


On Wed, Feb 19, 2003 at 09:10:48PM -0800, Eugene Surovegin wrote:

> I tried to compile the _same_ PPC kernel for one of boards (440GP
> based).

> Cross compiling on PIII 755Mhz running SuSE        - 16 min
> Cross compiling on G4 PowerBook 1Ghz running YDL   - 6 min

I don't have a PPC host to reasonably compare with, but a 440GP kernel
(linuxppc_2_4_devel) for me builds in 3 minutes 29s (with gcc-2.95).



   --cw

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Re: PowerMac vs. Intel for PowerPC Development Host

[Cort Dougan]

Ah, if that's the case, another data point.  The 2.8 GHz dual P4, with
hyperthreading on (very important) and make -j 8 gives me a 1m 45s _devel
tree build for the ebony.  If the cache is warm it's faster but that's
with a cold buffer cache.

} I wasn't trying to compare fairly, mostly get the lowest possible
} compile time.
}
}
} On Wed, Feb 19, 2003 at 09:10:48PM -0800, Eugene Surovegin wrote:
}
} > I tried to compile the _same_ PPC kernel for one of boards (440GP
} > based).
}
} > Cross compiling on PIII 755Mhz running SuSE        - 16 min
} > Cross compiling on G4 PowerBook 1Ghz running YDL   - 6 min
}
} I don't have a PPC host to reasonably compare with, but a 440GP kernel
} (linuxppc_2_4_devel) for me builds in 3 minutes 29s (with gcc-2.95).
}
}
}
}    --cw
}

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Re: PowerMac vs. Intel for PowerPC Development Host

[Cort Dougan]

A $600 Dell 1.8GHz builds the 2_4_devel 440 kernel in 2m 45s.  That's just
great for our users.  The x86's are getting cheaper and faster, too.

However, we do use the native builds for some whacky packages (like X) that
are never going to cross-build properly.

} As an actual data point: my measurements show that a dual 1GHz G4
} powermac is more than twice as fast at compiling PPC kernels as a
} 1.7GHz P4 (single cpu).
}
} You can't fairly compare compiling a PPC kernel on a PPC box with
} compiling an x86 kernel on an x86 box.  GCC does more work compiling
} for PPC than for x86.
}
} Paul.
}

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Re: PowerMac vs. Intel for PowerPC Development Host

[Jaap-Jan Boor]

Brian,

I think one advantage of using a mac with linuxppc as host (I use that @ home)
is that you can use newer compiler/library versions a little bit more
easy. I wasn't able yet to cross compile gcc-3.x for ppc on Solaris host,
it worked however on the mac.

Jaap-Jan

brian.auld@adic.com wrote:
>
> A while back I wrote an email to this list regarding development kit
> suggestions. Based mainly on feedback from this email, I am currently moving
> in the Intel/ELDK direction.
>
> Out of all the feedback I received, only one person suggested developing on
> a PowerMac based Linux box, thus eliminating the need for cross-compiling. I
> have become more interested in this option as some people in our company
> have noted that cross-compiling embedded linux presented problems on past
> projects when it came to building certain 3rd party applications.
>
> In the Intel vs. Mac debate for a linux development host for embedded ppc
> development, if money was not an issue, would I get more PowerMac
> recommendations??
>
> Thanks,
>
> -- Brian
>

--
J.G.J. Boor                                          Room:  BE-525
Lucent Technologies Nederland b.v.                   Phone: +31 35 687 4721
Optical Networking Group TMS Data                    Fax:   +31 35 687 5976
P.O. Box 1168, 1200 BD, Hilversum, The Netherlands   mailto:jjboor@lucent.com

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