Subject: Re: ppc LE questions (seeking help hand info pointers)

From: Mark Salisbury <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 14:32:27 -0400

Brad Boyer wrote:

>>>>>question 4. assuming I was willing to deliver a clean, complete LE
>>>>>enabling patch (including devices that are relevant to me), as a compile
>>>>>time config option and maintain that patch, what would be the primary
>>>>>obstacle to inclusion in the main line.
>>>>>
>>>>The objection to being an arch that attempts to support both LE and BE.
>>>>
>>>Note that we already have a precedent: mips and mipsel, both in arch/mips/.
>>>
>>And SH too, iirc.  I know it can be done.  But do we want to do it is the
>>question.
>>
>
> At least in the case of SH, there's a good reason. There's an external pin
> that controls the native endianness of the processor, and most setups just
> have it forcibly pulled high or low. I suspect the MIPS is the same reason,
> since it's used in similar situations. We don't have that excuse with ppc.
> Someone would have to come up with an excuse along the lines of "existing
> hardware won't work unless we do this" like it would have been for SH.
> (I had to work with the SH4e as used by Sega in the Dreamcast...)

well, this is in the context of a multi-CPU type (x86/ppc, sparc/ppc,
ppc/ppc, mips/ppc) shared memory multicomputer.

when dealing w/ direct mapped, shared memory, uniformity of endian-ness
makes many multicomputer problems easier to solve.(not to mention easier
for the customer to program...)

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