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

From: Segher Boessenkool <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2007 15:21:07 +0200

>>> 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.

And that is exactly as should be: a core dump represents the execution
state of a user program, it has nothing to do with the machine it was
generated on; it even is possible to restart a core dump generated on
e.g. an e500 on a 970, as long as it doesn't use facilities (e.g., SPE)
that the latter processor / execution environment doesn't provide.

> 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 :)

We don't have to worry about it :-)

Segher