Subject: Re: Support for Motorola Platforms

From: Adrian Cox <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 1999 15:37:13 +0100

Johnnie Peters wrote:
> Motorola has a new version of the MVME2400 with the MAX processor and
> as soon as I can get my hands on one I will do the work to get Linux
> to run on it.  Plans are also underway for new versions of the MTX
> series
> supporting the MAX processor.

Has anybody started work on GNU tools and kernel porting for Altivec
processors? The issues I see are:
(1) Altivec intructions in gas, so I don't have to enter the codes by
hand.
(2) Linux Kernel patches to load/save Altivec registers. These are large
enough that a lazy load/save might be useful.
(3) (Questionable) Patches to EGCS to support the C extensions that
Motorola specify in the Altivec PIM. I detest C extensions that add the
keyword "vector", but all Motorola's example code uses them.

All of these can be done based on documentation from Motorola's website.
I suspect that (1) has already happened inside some RTOS vendors, but
will take a long time to filter into the standard releases.

- Adrian Cox

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