FCP-100: armv7 plan

[Warner Losh]

On Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 1:05 PM, Jan Beich <jbeich at vfemail.net> wrote:

> Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> writes:
>
> > Greetings,
> >
> > This will serve as 'Last Call' for any objections to the plan to create
> an
> > armv7 MACHINE_ARCH in FreeBSD, as documented in FCP-0100.
> [...]
>
> Some ports want NEON support but FCP-0100 is vague about FreeBSD-specific
> differences between armv6 and armv7. Clang appears to enable NEON for all
> *-gnueabi* targets but I have no clue about GCC. Apparently, Android and
> Debian don't assume NEON on armv7.
>
> related: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=221898
>

Yes. We are vague about it on purpose. Just like we're vague about MMX,
MMX2, etc on x86 because different processors can/want use different
things. The goal, if it doesn't work already, is for NEON to work if used,
but not be required, just like all the other optional features of a CPU.

Warner