Re: BE (Was: What's the plan for powerpc64 in FreeBSD 16)

On Mon, 17 Nov 2025 20:37:28 +0000
Minsoo Choo <minsoochoo0122@proton.me> wrote:

> On Monday, November 17th, 2025 at 1:57 PM, Vadim Goncharov
> <vadimnuclight@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 17 Nov 2025 18:29:20 +0000
> > Minsoo Choo minsoochoo0122@proton.me wrote:
> >   
> > > I was thinking about this as well since the discussion on armv7. I think
> > > big-endian powerpc should be removed from releases from FreeBSD 16 for
> > > the following reasons.
> > > 
> > > - Big endian usage is not used widely anymore. Even most POWER systems on
> > > linux run on little-endian, and most Linux distros like RHEL only
> > > provides little-endian and not big-endian.
> > > - As FreeBSD is a complete operating system, if the powerpc is causing
> > > issues not only in kernel but also for utilities and ports due to lack of
> > > developers and hardware, there is no need to maintain them. Linux is a
> > > kernel, so Linux developers can maintain kernel only for powerpc64be and
> > > other developers take the responsibility of implementing libraries and
> > > utilities. FreeBSD cannot take this approach, and if the cost is bigger
> > > than the benefit, we should remove it.
> > > - This also applies to deprecation of 32-bit platforms, but there is no
> > > need to consider big endian compatibility unless we have valid reason.
> > > So far, all the major platforms we support are little-endian or
> > > bi-endian, and even bi-endian platforms like aarch64 and POWER mostly
> > > run on little endian operating systems. Is there a new architecture or
> > > even ongoing discussion of them that will be based on big endian (or
> > > 32-bit) where FreeBSD can shine? If not, there is no need to consider
> > > compatibility for future architectures.  
> > 
> > 
> > This does not mean that such will never arise in the future, especially
> > given that big-endian is better; and there were such rumors/tries for
> > RISC-V. 
> 
> Right, we don't know if big-endian will be trend in future. However, I'm
> against preparing next big-endian architecture too proactively. As I stated
> above, I don't see any big-endian architecture where FreeBSD can shine, and
> this includes RISC-V big-endian. A few weeks ago, someone tried to upstream
> riscvbe to Linux kernel, and Linus Torvalds was strongly against it [1], and
> I think although he talked bit aggressively (as always), his claim itself
> sounds reasonable.
> 
> [1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Torvalds-No-RISC-V-BE.

Torvalds, as usual in history, just aggressively pushes his unargumented shit,
e.g. remember kqueue vs epoll with nonsense arguments just to not acknowledge
BSD superiority in area; this time about BE is not exception.

-- 
WBR, @nuclight