RFC: Dropping i386/soft-float and 386ex BSPs

Joel Sherrill joel.sherrill at OARcorp.com
Tue Mar 1 16:20:15 UTC 2011


On 03/01/2011 10:04 AM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On 02/15/2011 03:34 PM, Joel Sherrill wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am wondering if the time has come to drop support for
>> x86 w/o HW FPU (e.g. multilibs with software floating
>> point. I do not know of any CPUs currently available
>> which match this profile. If there are any x86
>> w/o HW FPU available, please correct me.
>>
>> Periodically gcc breaks for this because no one else even
>> builds this variation except RTEMS. This alone is not
>> justification but it is a serious hint this configuration is
>> WAY past its prime.
>>
>>   From a practical viewpoint, this would likely involve:
>>
>> + dropping the i386ex and ts386ex BSPs
>> + dropping i386/soft-float multilib variant
>> + maybe dropping i486/soft-float
>> + probably moving minimum CPU assumption to 486
>> in GCC for i386-rtems gcc.
>>
>> Any thoughts? Anyone care about i386DX w/o FPU,
>> i386ex, and 486sx?
> It's been 2 weeks since you asked ...
>
Sorry.  With sick relatives at the house, things slipped by.
> ... Till responded he believes the i386 may have a user-base,
>
He confirmed there is a CPU core currently available which
matches this profile.  So I can't see killing the multilib support.
> ... I would expect these multilibs make sense for testing purposes and
> could be required by some emulators.
Agreed.  I think qemu can simulate this but -cpu ? is broken
on Fedora. :(
> ... nobody replied to the proposal to remove "i386ex" and "ts386ex"-BSPs.
>
>
>   From this, I conclude,
> - it's not clear whether these multilib have a user-base.
>
No.  But the CPU variants are alive.
> - the i386ex and ts386ex BSPs don't seem to have an active user-base.
>
> Proposal: Let's remove the i386ex and tx386ex BSP _NOW_.
>
I think this is reasonable.  Plus it makes clean up in the x86
a lot easier.  Only 1 BSP and we can test it. :)
> Should somebody start yelling in near future, we could resort to
> restoring them in CVS, should somebody start yelling next month, he
> simply "has lost".
:D
> Ralf


-- 
Joel Sherrill, Ph.D.             Director of Research&  Development
joel.sherrill at OARcorp.com        On-Line Applications Research
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