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From:   Kjetil Oftedal <oftedal@gmail.com>
Date:   Fri, 18 Dec 2020 23:28:08 +0100
Message-ID: <CALMQjD-M4MN+zcZ0t4P5hvtjbd57azmNRmsj9jvwyHFquY84Vw@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 0/13] sparc32: sunset sun4m and sun4d
To:     Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>
Cc:     David S Miller <davem@davemloft.net>, sparclinux@vger.kernel.org,
        Andreas Larsson <andreas@gaisler.com>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@kernel.org>,
        Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>,
        Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Anshuman Khandual <anshuman.khandual@arm.com>,
        Arvind Sankar <nivedita@alum.mit.edu>,
        Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com>,
        Denis Efremov <efremov@linux.com>,
        Dmitry Safonov <0x7f454c46@gmail.com>,
        Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
        Ira Weiny <ira.weiny@intel.com>,
        Lorenzo Pieralisi <lorenzo.pieralisi@arm.com>,
        Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>,
        Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>,
        Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
        Stephen Rothwell <sfr@canb.auug.org.au>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>, Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, debian-sparc@lists.debian.org
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On 18/12/2020, Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org> wrote:
> The sun4m and sun4d based SPARC machines was very popular in the
> 90'ties and was then replaced by the more powerful sparc64
> class of machines.
> Today there is only Gentoo that to my best knowledge supports
> sparc32 and people have moved on to more capable HW.
>
> Cobham Gaisler have variants of the LEON processer that
> runs sparc32 - and they are in production today.
>
> With this patchset I propose to sunset sun4m and sun4d and move
> focus to a more streamlined support for LEON.
>
> One downside is that qemu supports sun4m - and we may loose
> some testing possibilities when sun4m is dropped. qemu supports
> LEON to some degree - I have not yet tried it out.
>
> Andreas from Gaisler have indicated that they may be more active
> upstream on sparc32 - and this will only be easier with a kernel
> where the legacy stuff is dropped.
>

This makes me a bit sad. But I guess I haven't had any time to put
into the sparc32 port
for many years, so I guess it is time to let go.

But I do believe that by doing this we should make sure we are not
putting ourselves
in a position where the sparc kernel-developers don't have access to
any real sparc32
hardware.

SUN machines were at least plentiful. The LEON-family of processors
being targeted
towards the rad-hardened market are not so much available.

Maybe Gaisler can contribute some systems, or make some available remotely?

Best regards,
Kjetil Oftedal