Subject: Re: [PATCH] add Altivec/VMX state to coredumps

From: Matt Sealey <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2007 12:05:01 +0100

Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-09-25 at 19:00 +0100, Matt Sealey wrote:
>> Kumar Gala wrote:
>>> I'm wondering how we distinguish a core dump w/altivec state vs one  
>>> with SPE state.
>> Sheer number of registers saved?
>>
>> Why not put the PVR in core dumps that'd make it all easier..
> 
> PVR wouldn't be very useful...  What if you have altivec disabled ? Also
> that would mean your gdb has to know about all new processors...

Is that such a big deal? :D

Hypothetically it would be impossible to determine if you were running
on a G5 with the FPU and AltiVec turned off or an e500 core with SPE,
given the data saved. Is that a misfeature of GDB that we even have to
worry about this, or some noble plus point of a unified ISA? You decide :)

-- 
Matt Sealey <[email-masked]>
Genesi, Manager, Developer Relations