Hi Arnd!
(Please let's have this cross-posted for more visibility. I only learned about this
while reading Phoronix news)
I also looked at non-ARM platforms while preparing for my article. Some of
these look like they are no longer actively maintained or used, but I'm not
doing anything about those unless the maintainers would like me to:
* h8300: Steven Rostedt has repeatedly asked about it to be removed
or fixed in 2020 with no reply. This was killed before in 2013, added back
in 2015 but has been mostly stale again since 2016
As far as I know, Yoshinori Sato is actively maintaining H8300 support, see:
https://osdn.net/projects/uclinux-h8/
* c6x: Added in 2011, this has seen very few updates since, but
Mark still Acks patches when they come. Like most other DSP platforms,
the model of running Linux on a DSP appears to have been obsoleted
by using Linux on ARM with on-chip DSP cores running bare-metal code.
* sparc/sun4m: A patch for removing 32-bit Sun sparc support (not LEON)
is currently under review
I don't think this has reached any agreement yet. Multiple people want it to stay.
* powerpc/cell: I'm the maintainer and I promised to send a patch to remove it.
it's in my backlog but I will get to it. This is separate from PS3,
which is actively
maintained and used; spufs will move to ps3
* powerpc/chrp (32-bit rs6000, pegasos2): last updated in 2009
I'm still using this. Please keep it.
* powerpc/amigaone: last updated in 2009
* powerpc/maple: last updated in 2011
* m68k/{apollo,hp300,sun3,q40} these are all presumably dead and have not
seen updates in many years (atari/amiga/mac and coldfire are very much
alive)
Dito. I have both sun3 and hp300 machines.
* mips/jazz: last updated in 2007
* mips/cobalt: last updated in 2010
There might be some value in dropping old CPU support on architectures
and platforms that are almost exclusively used with more modern CPUs.
If there are only few users, those can still keep using v5.10 or v5.4 stable
kernels for a few more years. Again, I'm not doing anything about them,
except mention them since I did the research.
These are the oldest one by architecture, and they may have reached
their best-served-by-date:
* 80486SX/DX: 80386 CPUs were dropped in 2012, and there are
indications that 486 have no users either on recent kernels.
There is still the Vortex86 family of SoCs, and the oldest of those were
486SX-class, but all the modern ones are 586-class.
* Alpha 2106x: First generation that lacks some of the later features.
Since all Alphas are ancient by now, it's hard to tell whether these have
any fewer users.
I don't see the point in crippling Alpha support. Does this achieve anything?
* IA64 Merced: first generation Itanium (2001) was quickly replaced by
Itanium II in 2002.
* MIPS R3000/TX39xx: 32-bit MIPS-II generation, mostly superseded by
64-bit MIPS-III (R4000 and higher) starting in 1991. arch/mips still
supports these in DECstation and Toshiba Txx9, but it appears that most
of those machines are of the 64-bit kind. Later MIPS32 such as 4Kc and
later are rather different and widely used.
* PowerPC 601 (from 1992) just got removed, later 60x, 4xx, 8xx etc
are apparently all still used.
* SuperH SH-2: We discussed removing SH-2 (not J2 or SH-4)
support in the past, I don't think there were any objections, but
nobody submitted a patch.
Isn't SH-2 basically J-2? I'm not sure what we would gain here.
* 68000/68328 (Dragonball): these are less capable than the
68020+ or the Coldfire MCF5xxx line and similar to the 68360
that was removed in 2016.
Adrian
--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer - glaubitz@xxxxxxxxxx
`. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
