Re: Proposed roadmap to 1.0

[Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>]

On 06/30/2013 01:42:48 AM, Isaac wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 30, 2013 at 01:34:09AM -0400, Rich Felker wrote:
> > > m32r is live, but I'm not aware of much interest.
> > > tilera and epiphany (the Parallela coprocessor) sound interesting,
> > > but are likely to be limited in availability.
> >
> > Not familiar with them, but my guess would be they're interesting.  
> In
> 
> Tilera Tile:
> http://www.tilera.com/products/processors
> In brief, it's a 64-bit processor that comes with up to 100 cores per  
> cpu
> (last I checked), topping out around 1.6 GHz. Linux is the only OS.
> 
> Epiphany:
> http://www.adapteva.com/introduction/
> Used in this project:
> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomputer-for-everyone/
> In short, a multicore 32-bit risc cpu currently only used as a  
> coprocessor.
> Not really a candidate for a port, but if it ever does get a full  
> Linux,
> it might be interesting.

I'm still trying to fluff out  
http://landley.net/aboriginal/architectures.html and even if I don't  
describe half the Linux architectures I interrogated git to get a list  
of when each one was added. Might be useful.

> > embedded, everything has niche uses. On the high-end server side, on
> > the other hand, anything but x86_64 (for straight power) or ARM (for
> > cutting the primary cost of a data center: electricity) is madness.  
> In
> > other words, I think there's a lot more value in supporting  
> diversity
> > on the embedded side than on the enterprise side.
> 
> Power has a bit of the enterprise, too; it's got lower power usage (vs
> x86, no comparisons with ARM I'm aware of), and currently holds the
> highest clock speed of any stock cpu.

Half the game consoles out there are Power. (Dunno about the current  
generation.) Back when Praystation 3 supported Linux built-in, it was  
the cheapest way to get a 64 bit PPC system with the Cell processor  
stuff. (Which alas never took off because it was way too hard to  
program and they were just proprietary enough in the programming info  
to prevent open source people from ever quite managing to care. These  
days Hexagon has all the "3D rendering in software" buzz they used to  
brag about, but that's problematic to get a test environment working  
too...)

Rob