Agree, whilst v7A is our priority, we need to 'do the right thing' for everyone
Save Sent from my iPhone On 2 Sep 2010, at 18:17, Jon Smirl <jonsm...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 11:56 AM, Arnd Bergmann <a...@arndb.de> wrote: >> On Wednesday 01 September 2010, Michael Hope wrote: >> >>> We will try to do no harm to other architectures or earlier ARM >>> versions. The Thumb-2 routines may be applicable to the Cortex-M and >>> Cortex-R series but we will not optimise for them. >>> >>> I'd like Linaro to state this explicitly in the next round. >>> https://wiki.linaro.org/Linaro1011/TechnicalRequirements defines a >>> 'Standard ARMv7 Configuration' but there's no higher level statement >>> justifying it, no statement restricting us to it, and it includes ARM, >>> Thumb-2, and Thumb-1. >> >> I think there are two aspects to this: >> >> On the one hand, we need to improve the code formost for new CPUs looking >> forward, so the latest generation of shiny high-end hardware is what >> matters the most and needs to be the primary target. Today's high end >> is tomorrow's mainstream, so sooner or later everyone will benefit from >> this. >> >> On the other hand, I think we need to be relevant and provide code that >> everyone can use. The market today mainly consists of stuff that's not >> the primary focus, like ARM926 or some non-MMU cores. Refusing to do a >> simple fix because it's not relevant for Cortex-A8/A9 will just manage >> to piss off people [1]. >> >> Obviously there has to be a middle ground. We're building the binary >> packages for the configuration Dave mentioned (v7A/Neon), but IMHO >> that shouldn't prevent anyone from rebuilding it with our tool chain >> without having to make significant changes. If there are patches readily >> available for stuff that's not our primary focus (thumb1, non-cortex v7A >> CPUs, vfp without neon, ...), I'd say we should still keep them or >> get them upstream. > > As an embedded developer I'd like to see a standardized tool chain for > building on most ARM architectures. There are at least two groups of > users for this tool chain - ARM based PCs and embedded systems. There > are dozens are various tool chain build systems for ARM. Every time I > get a new embedded dev board I have to build yet another ARM tool > chain to match what the accompanying software expects. This is a > significant hurdle to new developers who may not have fast machines. > Some of the people I've worked with needed 24hrs to build a tool > chain. Let's get a standardized tool chain for the older ARM chips > into a distribution to stop this needless proliferation. > > >> >> Arnd >> >> [1] http://www.joe-ks.com/archives_oct2006/ItsNotMyJob.htm >> >> _______________________________________________ >> linaro-dev mailing list >> linaro-dev@lists.linaro.org >> http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-dev >> > > > > -- > Jon Smirl > jonsm...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ linaro-dev mailing list linaro-dev@lists.linaro.org http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo/linaro-dev
