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Posted to dev@httpd.apache.org by Brian Behlendorf <br...@hyperreal.org> on 1997/07/15 02:08:33 UTC
Fwd: UltraPenguin-1.0 - Linux for UltraSparcs
And away they go....
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From: "David S. Miller" <da...@jenolan.rutgers.edu>
>Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce
>Subject: UltraPenguin-1.0 - Linux for UltraSparcs
>Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1997 10:28:00 GMT
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>
>Are you tired of wondering what the true performance
>capabilities of your UltraSparc system are?
>
>Are you tired of the endless promises from SunSoft
>as to when they will provide you with a true 64-bit
>userland under Solaris?
>
>Are you tired of not being able to find out what is
>going on "under the hood" of the OS you currently
>run on your UltraSparc systems?
>
>Yes? Well then wake up sleepy head, UltraPenguin-1.0 is here!
>
> ( A condensed version of this announcement is readable via
> http://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/linux/ultrapenguin-1.0/ as well)
>
> UltraPenguin-1.0
>
> NEW BRUNSWICK, PRAGUE. Jul, 12th, 1997. The UltraLinux team
>proudly announces UltraPenguin 1.0, first publicly available
>distribution of Linux for UltraSPARC I and II processor based
>workstations. Some lower end EnterPrise server machines are supported
>as well in uni-processor mode. See below.
>
> This distribution is based on Red Hat Linux, version 4.2 for
>sparc.
>
>*DISCLAIMER*: Although this is based upon a RedHat Linux release,
> RedHat does not support this. They will not provide
> support for the UltraPenguin-1.0 distribution. It is
> our hack which we put together so that people can be
> provided with a full UltraLinux system early. Please do
> not bother RedHat about problems you encounter with
> this release, thank you.
>
> UltraLinux is a fast 64bit free operating system, which
>supports up to 1TB of physical and another 1TB of IO memory, fully
>supports Linux/Sparc 32bit binaries plus will soon support 64bit
>UltraLinux ELF binaries. It uses the Visual Instruction Set for high
>bandwidth operations, even older 32-bit applications take advantage of
>this increased performance if they are dynamically linked.
>
> The 64-bit userland for UltraPenguin is half done, developers
>have initial statically linked ELF 64-bit binaries working. We will
>announce seperately the availability of this so others can experiment
>with it and help us out, so please be patient.
>
> Where can I get it?
>
>ULTRAPENGUIN 1.0 distribution is available at least from the following
>sites:
>
> ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/OS/Linux/Sparc/ultrapenguin-1.0
> ftp://vger.rutgers.edu/pub/linux/Sparc/ultrapenguin-1.0
>
>But surely it will reach all the sites which mirror these two very
>soon.
>
>What UltraSparc machines are currently supported?
>
> Ultra 1 desktop systems
> Ultra 2 desktop and some server systems
>
>which have a TurboGX (cgsix) framebuffer.
>
> Creator and Creator3D machines are not yet supported, unless
>you put a supported framebuffer into one of the sbus slots. Creator
>support is now actively being developed.
>
> Ultra 2 low end servers are supported in uni-processor
>mode. For example, Ultra EnterPrise 1 and Ultra EnterPrise 2 servers
>can be expected to work. Higher end EnterPrise server machines such as
>the 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000, and 10000, all of which use the Gigaplane
>bus, are not supported yet.
>
> If you are interested in seeing UltraPenguin supported on the
>higher end server machines, you are encouraged to make an effort to
>help Jakub or David obtain such a system so that the support can be
>written.
>
>(David leaves for SGI in mid September, and thus will no be able to
>contribute as heavily, if at all, on the necessary work, so if you can
>assist with this, do it soon!)
>
> We realize that many will want to install and use UltraPenguin
>via a serial console. RedHat fully supports this in their installation
>mechanism, *however* we have been so busy working on getting
>UltraPenguin to a releasable state that we have not had time to test
>and fix any problems with serial console in the kernel. In fact we
>have not even tried to use it for some time. Please be patient, and we
>will work on making it work and giving it a good testing. Such
>updates will be announced here and on the usual Linux/Sparc mailing
>lists, so it will be hard to miss when it happens. 8-)
>
> You might want to ask why do I need Linux on my Ultra? - here
>is a couple of reasons why you shouldn't miss this:
>
> It is free (you have full source code for kernel and most of the
> userland programs (with the exception of commercial binary only
> programs))
>
> It is fast (it tries to get most of the wonderful features of the
> SPARC v9 and the UltraSPARC chip - the speed increase from
> running the same program on Solaris 2.5.1 may be really big - see
> following lmbench numbers
>
> It is 64bit - no need to limit yourself to 4G of virtual
> memory. Also, your programs can make use of full 64bit registers
>
> It has virtual consoles, unlike Solaris, where the console is
> nearly unusable and whoever wants to actually do something must
> run X Window immediately
>
> It runs nearly all SunOS binaries and some Solaris binaries (more
> progress with Solaris binary support will appear soon, especially
> now that we have completed most of the Ultra port work, but see
> below how you can make this happen faster!)
>
>How fast is it? Well, you are invited to go take a look at some
>lmbench numbers we've been collecting during the porting work:
>
>http://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/linux/ultrapenguin-1.0/lmbench.txt
>
> There is still a lot to do! But here is how _you_ can help
>to make it happen more quickly.
>
> Free software projects, such as the UltraPenguin port, base
>their success mostly upon the help of various individuals on the net.
>The more of these people we have for the project, the more successful
>it will be and the more quickly progress will be made.
>
> This is why we are asking for people who have spare time to
>help us complete our goal of having a more complete UltraPenguin
>system. Here is a brief list of projects on which you may be able to
>help out:
>
> 1) 64-bit userland
>
> Although half or mostly complete, much work still needs to
> be done. Jakub and myself will be working hard on adding
> shared library support to what we have already. But we
> will certainly need people to test compiling many packages
> and finding+reporting bugs that they find when doing that.
>
> Some time next week we will put up the current work which
> has been completed so far, so people can "play" with it
> and perhaps decide if they would like to help us finish it.
>
> 2) New platforms
>
> The code necessary to support just about any current SBUS
> based Ultra desktop or server has been written. What does
> not exist is the minimal code necessary to support Sun's
> higher end Enterprise server systems. This work
> essentially requires that either Jakub or David get some
> kind of direct access to such systems. So if you are in
> a position to make this a reality for us, you are highly
> encouraged to do so and to contact David and Jakub.
>
> David will be working on SMP support starting next week,
> this work should be done quickly because he does have a
> dual processor system on his desk now.
>
> As for Ultra/AX PCI based machines, we have someone working
> on these systems, but having more of us working on it
> cannot hurt and can only make it happen faster. So if you
> can donate machine and documentation loaners, please do so!
>
> 3) Solaris binary compatibility
>
> Solaris binary compatibility is half way done via the iBCS2
> module and some programs work, but a lot of work is still
> needed. David, Jakub and Miguel are now really busy with
> other hacks, so if you'd like to help with this, we'd be
> very thankful.
>
> 4) SunOS free ld.so
>
> So that people don't have to buy SunOS just so that they
> can run Netscape on their UltraLinux and SparcLinux boxes,
> we need someone to write a free ld.so for SunOS shared
> binaries. Some work in this area has already been done,
> but not much yet.
>
> 5) Framebuffer support
>
> We're looking for framebuffer hackers as well, especially
> for people who will write support for double buffering
> for TurboGX and full support for the Creator and Creator3D
> framebuffers in X11R6.3. You might also work on enhancing
> existing kernel framebuffer drivers.
>
> Also, Dirk Hohndale of the XFREE86 project has expressed
> interest in merging all of our Sun frame buffer support
> into the Xfree86 sources. In this way, one unified source
> base for X will exist for all Linux platforms. This would
> not be very complex work, but would require a bit of
> someone's time. If you would like to help organize and
> work on this please contact us soon.
>
> 6) ATM
>
> Jakub has two sbus ATM cards, one from Cisco and one
> SunATM 1.0 and there is a generic support for ATM layer
> for Linux already, but really has no time to play with the
> cards without single line of documentation, so if you could
> get us some documentation on these monsters and/or write
> the support yourself, you'd help a lot.
>
> 7) GCC
>
> There is still a lot of work in making GCC produce more
> optimized code for the UltraSPARC. Also, David started
> a project for new sparc support in gcc, so that one
> single compiler will be able to produce 32bit sparc code,
> 32bit code enhanced by the v9 instructions and full
> 64bit v9 and v9a code. You can help with this as well,
> just ask...
>
> CREDITS and Thank You's
>
> Although Jakub and David have done the majority if not all of
>the 64-bit port of the kernel, others have helped in substantial ways
>and we'd like to make mention of them here:
>
> Thanks for Linus "Pinhead" Torvalds for constructing an
> operating system worth porting to such nice hardware in
> the first place.
>
> Thanks to John Gilmore, the CAIP Research Center at Rutgers
> University, and Charles University in Prague for providing
> us with the hardware on which to perform the port. Without
> these donations absolutely nothing would have happened and
> UltraPenguin-1.0 would have been a dream at best.
>
> Thanks to David Sitsky for the initial 32-bit Ultra port,
> this work proved that such a port was possible at all and
> provided the basis for some of the things we did in the
> 64-bit kernel.
>
> Doug Evans and the rest of the GCC development team for a
> true 64-bit Sparc/V9 port of the compiler and utilities
> so that we could have the tools necessary to actually develop
> UltraPenguin-1.0
>
> Richard Henderson for doing all of the GNU libc porting work
> and testing so far for the sparc64 platform. Jakub and David
> would have much more work to do here had Richard not done what
> he has thus far. His contribution is immeasurable.
>
> Thanks to Larry McVoy, for writing the LMBENCH benchmark
> suite, so that we could perform our initial performnce work
> on the UltraLinux kernel.
>
> Since the sparc64 kernel is using many of the existing drivers
> from the sparc32 and also other parts of the code from that
> code, the other Linux/Sparc hackers must be mentioned. This
> includes the following people: Miguel De Icaza, Eddie
> C. Dost, Derrick J. Brashear, Thomas K. Dyas, Manish
> Vachharajani, and others too numerous to mention.
>
> Extra special thanks to RedHat Software for providing the
> 32-bit Sparc release which we could base the UltraPenguin-1.0
> distribution on. This has saved us an enormous amount of
> work.
>
> Non-Thank You's
>
> We initially considered listing here the people and
> organizations who over time, and still today, give us a hard
> time. However, we decided that this is bad manners for such
> a festive announcement.
>
> These assholes know who they are anyways... 8-)
>
>The UltraLinux team:
>
>David S. Miller (davem@caip.rutgers.edu)
>Jakub Jelinek (jj@sunsite.mff.cuni.cz)
>
>
>
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