the future of sun4v

[Kris Kennaway]

Peter Jeremy wrote:
> [Replies re-directed to freebsd-sun4v]
> 
> On 2008-Aug-21 14:42:55 -0700, Kip Macy <kmacy at freebsd.org> wrote:
>> I believe that there is a general expectation by freebsd users and
>> developers that unsupported code should not be in CVS. Although sun4v
>> is a very interesting platform for developers doing SMP work, I simply
>> do not have the time or energy to maintain it. If someone else would
>> like to step up and try his hand I would be supportive of his efforts.
>> In the likely event that no one steps forward by the time that 7.1 is
>> released I will ask that it be moved to the Attic.
> 
> Since there are no other current SPARC CPUs that FreeBSD can run on
> (the US-II has been obsolete for about 6 years and FreeBSD won't run
> on any more recent sun4u chips), that will also remove the
> justification for maintaining a SPARC64 port.
> 
> I don't have the knowledge or available time to maintain the sun4v
> port by myself but would be happy to be part of a team doing so.  One
> impediment I have is that I don't have a T-1 or T-2 system that I can
> dedicate to FreeBSD.  I could work on FreeBSD in a guest domain - but
> since FreeBSD doesn't support either the virtual disk or virtual
> network, actually getting FreeBSD running there presents somewhat of a
> challenge.
> 

There are two t1000 systems in the freebsd.org cluster that are 
available for people to work on.  Rink Springer has also expressed 
interest in this.

Perhaps Kip can explain some more about what things he looked at, but 
the most serious bugs might be in pmap or perhaps trap handling. 
Operationally, things like buildworld -jN die quickly with random 
signals, kernel traps, etc.

Kris

P.S. It looks like marius has made progress on US III but sun4u is still 
an architectural dead end.