Re: Bug#857172: Please enable SSE2 on amd64 and disable altivec on PPC ports
Hi,
On Wed, 8 Mar 2017, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz 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.
Right. Although the Tabor is not in production yet and never went on sale
officially, because they're waiting for the AmigaOS4.1 developers to pull
together some semi-working system for the machine. As it supposed to sell
bundled...
> > 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 :(.
Indeed. Actually the X5000 seems out of stock everywhere, and A-Eon is
quite silent these days. But if not them, then no one, at this point, I'd
say.
> > 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.
You mean the Go developers require a company backing a port to accept it
mainline, or just the usual case - there are zero people with both Go and
PowerPC interest?
> > 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.
I was referring to the idea of restricting the entire Debian PPC port to
Altivec only.
> Do these smaller OS even support applications like mplayer, Firefox or
> GIMP?
Yes and no. :)
Both MorphOS and AmigaOS4 has a heavily customized MPlayer port, and at
least the MorphOS version has runtime Altivec detection. MorphOS supports
runtime Altivec detection elsewhere in the system too, like various JPEG
and other format decoders, Ogg, MP3, FFMPEG for video-thumbnail icons in
the desktop, whatnot. They also have their own set of custom Altivec
optimizations here and there. And no, no Firefox, but there's a WebKit
based browser called OWB, with a custom mediaplayer subsystem (based on
FFMPEG, et.al.), which can do Altivec with runtime detecion as well, if
I'm not mistaken.
And the last two platforms added to MorphOS, the ACube's Sam460 and the
A-Eon A1 X5000 have no Altivec, while most users are still on old Macs,
with Altivec. The details might vary, but the situation is similar with
OS4 too.
Charlie
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