Jiri Gaisler wrote:
There is a large installed based of V7/V8 Sparc devices,
and it is in fact growing. This is because of the
adoption of the LEON SPARC V8 processor, which is used
in a growing number of embedded devices. As an example,
the Nemerix NJ1030A GPS receiver contains a LEON SPARC
cpu and was shipped in 1.5 million pieces in 2005 alone.
Other LEON products include the Infrant Network Storage
Processor (IT3102/IT3107) and the ATMEL AT697.
I would therefore suggest that the gcc defaults for
sparc-elf and sparc-linux stays as is (V7) while the
solaris 10+ can safely be modified to V9.
Jiri and Ralf are correct. There is an embedded SPARC community
and it has some very serious applications. The SPARC/ERC32 developed
by ESA is the processor of choice for many space applications. The LEON
CPU is even open sourced VHDL so you are likely to see even more designs
using it commercially.
I can't speak for GNU/Linux or Solaris but I can speak for the
embedded community. Don't break the embedded sparc support
(e.g. sparc-elf and sparc-rtems*) for V7 and don't change the default
for those. V7 is viable and alive in the embedded world even if
it is no longer in use in workstations.
--joel sherrill
Jiri.
Ralf Corsepius wrote:
On Wed, 2006-03-15 at 20:10 -0800, Alexey Starovoytov wrote:
Hi,
The default architecture for GCC SPARC is V7.
What do gcc sparc developers think about changing it to V8PLUS?
Few things to consider:
- v7 is legacy
. used in old Sun's sun4c systems
. 32-bit only
. no integer mul/div insns
AFAICT, v7's are still in use in embedded platforms.
1st choice (the best):
- change the default for all sparc platforms
This is likely to break toolchains targetting embedded targets. I am
almost 100% sure it would break sparc-rtems).
2nd:
- change the default for Solaris 7+ and linux
3rd (100% safe):
- change the default for Solaris 10+
Also 64-bit Linux doesn't have to mean 64-bit (v9) gcc compiler,
so at the same time it would be good to change it to v8plus as well.
All that changes can be done by easily tweaking gcc/config.gcc
by adding with_cpu=v9
I don't have an opinion on Solaris or Linux.
Ralf
.
