On 18/12/2020, Sam Ravnborg <sam@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > The sun4m and sun4d based SPARC machines was very popular in the > 90'ties and was then replaced by the more powerful sparc64 > class of machines. > Today there is only Gentoo that to my best knowledge supports > sparc32 and people have moved on to more capable HW. > > Cobham Gaisler have variants of the LEON processer that > runs sparc32 - and they are in production today. > > With this patchset I propose to sunset sun4m and sun4d and move > focus to a more streamlined support for LEON. > > One downside is that qemu supports sun4m - and we may loose > some testing possibilities when sun4m is dropped. qemu supports > LEON to some degree - I have not yet tried it out. > > Andreas from Gaisler have indicated that they may be more active > upstream on sparc32 - and this will only be easier with a kernel > where the legacy stuff is dropped. > This makes me a bit sad. But I guess I haven't had any time to put into the sparc32 port for many years, so I guess it is time to let go. But I do believe that by doing this we should make sure we are not putting ourselves in a position where the sparc kernel-developers don't have access to any real sparc32 hardware. SUN machines were at least plentiful. The LEON-family of processors being targeted towards the rad-hardened market are not so much available. Maybe Gaisler can contribute some systems, or make some available remotely? Best regards, Kjetil Oftedal
