Lennart Sorensen wrote:
On Mon, May 06, 2013 at 06:33:51PM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:*click*. now some comments on #arm-netbooks make sense. such as "sparc has had device tree for 20 years". okaaaaay. i get it.Yes devicetree was invented as a way for embedded powerpc systems to provide the same information to the kernel as openfirmware (IEEE 1275) already provided on server and desktop powerpc machines. That system was already in use on powerpc and sparc machines. I can't remember if any MIPS machines used openfirmware or not.
Not production MIPS systems as far as I know. Mitch's position is that porting is simple (MRDA) and it wouldn't surprise me if somebody's done it.
The fact FCODE on add in PCI cards and similar could be used to initialize and enumerate devices in the system is quite nice since it is CPU architecture independant (It is Forth code).
Strictly, it's Forth compiled into fcode; I'm not sure, but possibly also used for drivers on PPC Mac disks etc. Whether or not one likes Forth as a general-purpose language, it's definitely got its uses.
-- Mark Morgan Lloyd markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk [Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]