Re: Proposed roadmap to 1.0

[Rich Felker <dalias@aerifal.cx>]

On Sun, Jun 30, 2013 at 08:21:25AM +0100, Justin Cormack wrote:
> > > > Do we currently support 64-bit ppc?
> > >
> > > No, but 32-bit apps can run on 64-bit kernel as far as I know. I was
> > > just looking at the 64-bit ABI earlier today and it's rather
> > > gratuitously ugly, but probably not too hard to support.
> >
> > Apparently, it's also slower on some CPUs:
> > http://www.yellowdog-board.com/viewtopic.php?p=23037#p23037
> 
> I think that may not be true with newer silicon. IBM apparently no longer
> ship 32 bit userspace compatibility code.

Are you talking about AIX or a build of Linux they ship? My guess
would be they're just not shipping 32-bit libs, which wouldn't really
make any difference if your intent is to use a musl ecosystem instead.
If it's 32-bit support turned off in the kernel (is that even
possible?), that could also easily be turned back on.

> You can get access to new
> hardware at no cost through their partner program. Plus I still have one.

:)

> MIPS64 would be nice as the Chinese are making them (Loongson) for general
> use.

You can also run 32-bit userspace on MIPS64. However if you want to do
this, the n32 ABI (analogous to x32 on x86_64) is moderately more
efficient and less ugly.

So I agree MIPS n32 and maybe also n64 are interesting to support.

Rich