[9fans] non-PC hardware

[9fans] non-PC hardware

[maht]

I depressed myself my reading

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/Other_hardware/index.html

from the looks of it, other than x86 there's nothing modern (i.e. 1Ghz+)
that runs plan9

do I have this right ? 
-- 
  matt lawless
  maht0x0r@xsmail.com

-- 
http://www.fastmail.fm - A fast, anti-spam email service.

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[John Floren]

Pretty much. Correct me if I'm wrong, but beyond maybe ARM, you're not
going to have much luck getting 4th ed. running on anything except
x86. I'm not thrilled either, but I don't currently have the knowledge
or time to do any porting.

John

On 3/27/07, maht <mattmobile@proweb.co.uk> wrote:
> I depressed myself my reading
>
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/Other_hardware/index.html
>
> from the looks of it, other than x86 there's nothing modern (i.e. 1Ghz+)
> that runs plan9
>
> do I have this right ?
> --
>   matt lawless
>   maht0x0r@xsmail.com
>
> --
> http://www.fastmail.fm - A fast, anti-spam email service.
>
>


-- 
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[ron minnich]

arm
ppc
x86_64

not a bad choice, what else would you want to run on?

thanks

ron

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Lorenzo Fernando Bivens de la Fuente]

On Tuesday 27 March 2007 14:43:40 ron minnich wrote:
>... what else would you want to run on?

Perhaps the cell processor could be interesting.

On the other hand, you don't have to look to >1GHz processors to have 
something interesting... There are several small devices that would enjoy 
running plan 9 ;)

---
izaki

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[John Floren]

On 3/27/07, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> arm
> ppc
> x86_64
>
> not a bad choice, what else would you want to run on?
>
> thanks
>
> ron
>

What's the story on Plan 9 on Mac hardware? I just picked up an old
PowerMac 9600.

John
-- 
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[erik quanstrom]

where is x86_64?

- erik

On Tue Mar 27 16:44:15 EDT 2007, rminnich@gmail.com wrote:
> arm
> ppc
> x86_64
> 
> not a bad choice, what else would you want to run on?
> 
> thanks
> 
> ron

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Paul Lalonde]

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I would love to boot Plan9 on my PS3 :-)
I'm pretty sure it would be straightforward given that a linux  
already exists to show us how to boot under the LV-1 hypervisor.
What is the state of our PPC64 compiler?

Paul

On 27-Mar-07, at 1:54 PM, Lorenzo Fernando Bivens de la Fuente wrote:

> On Tuesday 27 March 2007 14:43:40 ron minnich wrote:
>> ... what else would you want to run on?
>
> Perhaps the cell processor could be interesting.
>
> On the other hand, you don't have to look to >1GHz processors to have
> something interesting... There are several small devices that would  
> enjoy
> running plan 9 ;)
>
> ---
> izaki
>
>

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Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[ron minnich]

On 3/27/07, Paul Lalonde <plalonde@telus.net> wrote:

> What is the state of our PPC64 compiler?

according to my records, you're doing it :-)

You have a milestone! get busy!

thanks

ron

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Paul Lalonde]

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:-) I get to add that to my list of projects displaced by real work.
If I really had my act together I'd download IBM's cell simulator and  
use that to hack at the compiler with.  But for now, back at making  
the damned PS3 jump through hoops.

Paul


On 27-Mar-07, at 2:57 PM, ron minnich wrote:

> On 3/27/07, Paul Lalonde <plalonde@telus.net> wrote:
>
>> What is the state of our PPC64 compiler?
>
> according to my records, you're doing it :-)
>
> You have a milestone! get busy!
>
> thanks
>
> ron

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Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Lawrence E. Bakst]

Many processor architectures are in the process of being marginalized or becoming niche architectures. With Apple switching to X86 and Intel just about dropping IA64, the IA32 and IA32/EM64T is the main architecture(s) going forward. Despite having just sold off the X-Scale embedded to Marvel, I expect Intel to get back into the embedded game with ultra low power X86 chips. Alpha is gone, Sparc is Sun only, MIPs might survive as an embedded architecture.

The big 3 going forward are X86, ARM, and PPC as someone else mentioned.

There is no doubt that plan9 is both portable and has a good dynamic range, from Bitsy to larger X86 boxes with multiple processors. So I am not depressed at all. Supporting new hardware takes lots of work. I've written more IO drivers in my life than most of you. It's a lot of work.

Personally if I was going to work on a plan9 porting I would focus on three areas.

1. The AppleTV box or the Mac Mini. Both of these are low cost machines. Intel actually has an open source driver for the graphics chip on the Mini, which is rare these days, although it doesn't contain source code to do 3D which is too bad. The AppleTV is dirt cheap and you can attach it to a large LCD TV (which are also getting very cheap, soon $1k for 46") and get a really nice setup. I hope the "community" can get some disclosure on the chips used inside the AppleTV box. It would make a nice plan9 terminal.

Because the new Apple stuff is X86 based, ports shouldn't be too hard, delta chip support.

2. Xen. Rumor has it that Xen will be built in to Apple's next OS, Leopard. Everyone is using Xen. So it would be nice to have great support for Xen in plan9. From what I read recently, it seems like it's almost there, but not merged into sources yet.

3. Q: Is there a EM64T version of plan9? If so which word/ptr size model does it use?

http://www.unix.org/version2/whatsnew/lp64_wp.html

I think all of the Intel chips going forward are going have EM64T. So plan9 should have good support for that. Plus you get 8 more registers with EM64T, which the architecture could really use.

leb


At 9:31 PM +0100 3/27/07, maht wrote:
>I depressed myself my reading
>
>http://plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/Other_hardware/index.html
>
>from the looks of it, other than x86 there's nothing modern (i.e. 1Ghz+)
>that runs plan9
>
>do I have this right ?
>--
>  matt lawless
>  maht0x0r@xsmail.com
>
>--
>http://www.fastmail.fm - A fast, anti-spam email service.

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[erik quanstrom]

> Despite having just sold off the X-Scale embedded to Marvel, I expect Intel to get back into the embedded game with ultra low power X86 chips. Alpha is gone, Sparc is Sun only, MIPs might survive as an embedded architecture.

intel still sells embedded xscale processors.  i looked at this a while
back
	http://www.intel.com/design/network/prodbrf/309430.htm
kind of looks like a network-cell processor, doesn't it?

> I think all of the Intel chips going forward are going have EM64T. So plan9 should have good support for that. Plus you get 8 more registers with EM64T, which the architecture could really use.

i'm not sure what advantage more registers present in modern (amd|intel)/x64
chips.  a value in l1 cache is only 1 cycle away.  so i'm not sure what the
practical difference is between something in a register and something in l1.

> Because the new Apple stuff is X86 based, ports shouldn't be too hard, delta chip support.

i'd agree with it not being hard.  but that is a considerable amount of
work.  granted, most architechtures are not as bad as the pee cee, but
one still has to interface with the boot rom, figure out how to find
and configure memory, set up interrupts, figure out how to talk to
the bus, how to print "hello, world", etc.  

ignoring the pc, since it's a pig, here's how much code is in each of the
various ports (my somewhat out-of-date copy):

bitsy	15240
ppc	10315
mtx	 7863

while new ports will be great, you need to be prepared for some heavy
lifting.

- erik

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[David Arnold]

-->"leb" == Lawrence E Bakst <ml@iridescent.org> writes:

  leb> Alpha is gone, Sparc is Sun only, MIPs might survive as an
  leb> embedded architecture. The big 3 going forward are X86, ARM, and
  leb> PPC as someone else mentioned.

MIPS has had somewhat of a resurgence recently, with many domestic
gateway/router/wifi boxes using, eg. Broadcom MIPS32 SoCs running Linux
or VxWorks.

but it's not used as a general-purpose processor any longer.  with
Apple's move to EM64T, you're left with a 1G UltraSPARCiii for $2200, a
2.5G PPC970 for $3000, or a 1G UltraSPARC T1 for $4000.  none of which
look attractive compared with the prices of an x86(-64)




d

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[William Josephson]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2007 at 08:06:22PM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote:
> i'm not sure what advantage more registers present in modern (amd|intel)/x64
> chips.  a value in l1 cache is only 1 cycle away.  so i'm not sure what the
> practical difference is between something in a register and something in l1.

It is more than 1 cycle away; more like 2-3 and for many
applications the extra registers do make a big difference.

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Anel Philippe]

David Arnold a écrit :
> -->"leb" == Lawrence E Bakst <ml@iridescent.org> writes:
>
>   leb> Alpha is gone, Sparc is Sun only, MIPs might survive as an
>   leb> embedded architecture. The big 3 going forward are X86, ARM, and
>   leb> PPC as someone else mentioned.
>
> MIPS has had somewhat of a resurgence recently, with many domestic
> gateway/router/wifi boxes using, eg. Broadcom MIPS32 SoCs running Linux
> or VxWorks.
>
> but it's not used as a general-purpose processor any longer.  
>   
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godson

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Charles Forsyth]

>ppc	10315

that's possibly a little misleading: that includes a private copy of devtls.c (2113 lines),
and there are at least two different platforms in that one directory

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Iruata Souza]

On 3/27/07, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> arm
> ppc
> x86_64
>
> not a bad choice, what else would you want to run on?
>
> thanks
>
> ron
>

mips

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Jack Johnson]

On 3/28/07, Iruata Souza <iru.muzgo@gmail.com> wrote:
> mips

Dang, can't find it, but there's some startup that's basically
building huge, single-board MIPS clusters using a mix of newer chips
for the interconnects and networking to keep latency down, and older
CPUs to keep heat and expense down.

Anyone else see this blurb?

-Jack

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Lluís Batlle]

2007/3/28, Lawrence E. Bakst <ml@iridescent.org>:
> Sparc is Sun only,

Isn't www.opensparc.net good for new manufacturers and uses of sparc
processors? In fact I don't know if someone other than Sun plans
building such processors or variants.

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[David Arnold]

-->"Jack" == Jack Johnson <knapjack@gmail.com> writes:

  Jack> Dang, can't find it, but there's some startup that's basically
  Jack> building huge, single-board MIPS clusters using a mix of newer
  Jack> chips for the interconnects and networking to keep latency down,
  Jack> and older CPUs to keep heat and expense down.

  Jack> Anyone else see this blurb?

http://www.movidis.com/ ?

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[andrey mirtchovski]

> Anyone else see this blurb?

http://www.sicortex.com/

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Tim Wiess]

> 2007/3/28, Lawrence E. Bakst <ml@iridescent.org>:
>> Sparc is Sun only,
> 
> Isn't www.opensparc.net good for new manufacturers and uses of sparc
> processors? In fact I don't know if someone other than Sun plans
> building such processors or variants.

    Fujitsu has some nice ultrasparc systems.

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Tim Wiess]

    fwiw i've had a 64-bit mips port in the works.  it was stalled
    many, many months ago due to the lack of spare cycles i had at the
    time.  however i'm really hoping to pick it back up in the next
    coming weeks.  most of the toolchain is working and some of the
    kernel parts are there.

    i absolutely do plan on continuing this, so i'll keep 9fans posted
    as soon as i'm back on track with it.

    tim


> On 3/27/07, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
>> arm
>> ppc
>> x86_64
>>
>> not a bad choice, what else would you want to run on?
>>
>> thanks
>>
>> ron
>>
> 
> mips

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[andrey mirtchovski]

i should perhaps elaborate:

sicortex stick 5000+ 64-bit mips cpus (each 1gflop, 972 six-way smp
compute nodes) onto a single backplane connected in a Kautz topology.
their whitepapers are quite interesting.

won an award at SC'06, if i remember correctly.

On 3/28/07, andrey mirtchovski <mirtchovski@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Anyone else see this blurb?
>
> http://www.sicortex.com/
>

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

They call it "compact". I wonder how would them call the "cluster" in the
Tupperware I saw in the snapshots sent earlier to the list :-)

On 3/28/07, andrey mirtchovski <mirtchovski@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Anyone else see this blurb?
>
> http://www.sicortex.com/
>
>

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Jack Johnson]

On 3/28/07, andrey mirtchovski <mirtchovski@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Anyone else see this blurb?
>
> http://www.sicortex.com/

That's the one.  Interesting box.

-J

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[erik quanstrom]

however, their flash presentation should be skipped:

	"Each node implements six full 64-bit Linux processors..." ?

that's almost a fortune.

- erik

On Wed Mar 28 12:22:20 EDT 2007, mirtchovski@gmail.com wrote:
> i should perhaps elaborate:
> 
> sicortex stick 5000+ 64-bit mips cpus (each 1gflop, 972 six-way smp
> compute nodes) onto a single backplane connected in a Kautz topology.
> their whitepapers are quite interesting.
> 
> won an award at SC'06, if i remember correctly.
> 
> On 3/28/07, andrey mirtchovski <mirtchovski@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Anyone else see this blurb?
> >
> > http://www.sicortex.com/
> >

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Sape Mullender]

> i should perhaps elaborate:
> 
> sicortex stick 5000+ 64-bit mips cpus (each 1gflop, 972 six-way smp
> compute nodes) onto a single backplane connected in a Kautz topology.
> their whitepapers are quite interesting.
> 
> won an award at SC'06, if i remember correctly.
> 
> On 3/28/07, andrey mirtchovski <mirtchovski@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Anyone else see this blurb?
>>
>> http://www.sicortex.com/

Cool.  One of my PhD students graduated on Kautz networks (Gerard Smit and
Paul Havinga, "Rattlesnake, a network for real-time multimedia communications",
SIGCOMM, 23(3), July 1992).

	Sape

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[Harri Haataja]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2007 at 12:42:22PM -0300, Iruata Souza wrote:
> On 3/27/07, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> >arm
> >ppc
> >x86_64
> >
> >not a bad choice, what else would you want to run on?
> 
> mips

sparc
hppa
power
cell
.. everything.

Small and old real boxen in particular.
What does plan9 need GHz for anyway ;)

Re: [9fans] non-PC hardware

[erik quanstrom]

On Thu Mar 29 06:56:01 EDT 2007, harriha@mail.student.oulu.fi wrote:
> Small and old real boxen in particular.
> What does plan9 need GHz for anyway ;)

plan 9 may not need ghz but it sure uses them well.  we just installed a new 
5000P-based cpu server with a single dual-core 1.85ghz woodcrest.

	; cd /sys/src/fs/kibbiee
	; mk clean; time mk>/dev/null
	1.22u 1.17s 2.16r 	 mk

	; cd /sys/src/9/pc
	; mk clean; time mk 'CONF=pc'>/dev/null
	3.80u 3.35s 5.71r 	 mk CONF=pc

that's with just one of the on-board nics using standard frames
and ken's fileserver serving files via il.

- erik