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Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports



On 03/08/2017 09:45 PM, Karoly Balogh (Charlie/SGR) wrote:
> I'm pretty sure A-Eon, who are selling the AmigaOne X5000 based on an
> e5500 core, funds the work of some Linux people to keep Debian up to date
> for that system. And that's a pretty juicy multicore desktop machine, with
> PCIe slots, RadeonHD videocards and everything, yet no Altivec.

I actually have two Tabor A1222 boards from them which I set up as buildds
for the powerpcspe port. One of the boards is broken and I have been waiting
for a replacements for months now.

> Based on their earlier activities, I'd guess A-Eon would be willing to
> support the right person with hardware, if this makes the difference.

I'm not sure how serious they are with these efforts given the fact that
I still haven't got a replacement for the second board yet :(.

> I think until some larger company backs it, or there's mass demand, like
> with other release versions, it won't happen anyway. I agree though, that
> the target needs to be redefined, other than "keep those old Macs running
> somehow".

This is pretty much the key issue. It lacks support from the community and
a big company. When I talked with IBM people, they said they basically don't
care about 32-Bit PowerPC anymore although they are still doing some bug
fixing, but things like a golang port for 32-Bit PowerPC won't happen.
At least there is a ppc64 (POWER5) port of golang.

> But it's still ironic in the light of this discussion that one of, if not
> the strongest desktop PPC box one can buy these days has no Altivec. And
> there are much smaller OSes than Linux which somehow still manage to
> handle this situation.

This isn't "Linux", it's a single application for which non-Altivec variants
don't make much sense anyways. Do these smaller OS even support applications
like mplayer, Firefox or GIMP?

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-    GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913


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