Re: POWER Port

"H. Peter Anvin" wrote:
> 
> Chris Wedgwood wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Jun 28, 2000 at 11:03:12AM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> >
> >     I thought IBM was doing a POWER-4 port internally?
> >
> > POWER 4 != POWER. Obvious statement; POWER 4 is very new, POWER is
> > older than PPC, about '91 or so I think?
> >
> > I doubt the POWER 4 port will work on the POWER.

Hi *,

  This is correct, the POWER4 work will not work on POWER. They are
very different from each other, POWER for instance is 32 bit chip, POWER4
is a 64 bit chip. POWER came out in 1991 if memory serves be correct and
POWER4 isn't out yet, it's under development yet.
 
> Well, there is POWER-1, -PC, -2, -3 and -4; I don't know how different
> they are.  If Sarah was referring to POWER-1, I would agree it's dead.

  POWER, POWER2 used the MCA bus so this is significant work that would 
need to be done to get the current PowerPC linux running on these machines.

  PowerPC Linux does run on IBM hardware, for those interested on what
makes models etc, take a gander at
oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/linux/projects/ppc 

  POWER3 and POWER4 are full 64 bit processors. Linux now runs on both 
of these processors as a 32 bit kernel. There's a bit more work to be
done here but it works.

  I should mention that the PowerPC Linux team is just starting work on
a 64 bit version of the PowerPC Linux kernel. We're hoping this will 
fit into something like arch/ppc64 as soon as work begins on 2.5.x.
This work isn't just an internal to IBM and we want definately
to work with the open source community on this. 
  Most of the discussion for the 64 bit PowerPC kernel has been on
[e-mail]. I encourage you to subscribe
to this list if you are at all interested in this.

  Regards,

  Tom  
 
-- 
Tom Gall - PowerPC Linux Team    "Where's the ka-boom? There was
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(w) [e-mail]         shattering ka-boom!"
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http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/linux