Keeping POWER relevant in the open source world
peter.czanik.hu
Keeping POWER relevant in the open source world
1–10 of 75 posts
Re: Keeping POWER relevant in the open source world
#2If i had a "different" ISA to market, I'd think the very first priority would be to have excellent free compilers for it, be they FOSS or not. Write our own and give them away if we gotta. Remove every barrier to people using your product that you can.
IBM doesn't think that way. They're probably using "the longhair hippies can't use this hardware" as a selling point.
Re: Keeping POWER relevant in the open source world
#3IBM had the opportunity of being the royalty-free ISA that RISC-V is. Or even release the cores "IP". They squandered it.
Re: Keeping POWER relevant in the open source world
#4If i had a "different" ISA to market, I'd think the very first priority would be to have excellent free compilers for it, be they FOSS or not. Write our own and give them away if we gotta. Remove every barrier to people using your product that you can. IBM doesn't think that way. They're probably using "the longhair hippies can't use this hardware" as a selling point.
TIL LLVM and gcc are not excellent free compilers and useless for longhair hippies. What do your hippies use?
Re: Keeping POWER relevant in the open source world
#5If i had a "different" ISA to market, I'd think the very first priority would be to have excellent free compilers for it, be they FOSS or not. Write our own and give them away if we gotta. Remove every barrier to people using your product that you can. IBM doesn't think that way. They're probably using "the longhair hippies can't use this hardware" as a selling point.
TIL LLVM and gcc are not excellent free compilers and useless for longhair hippies. What do your hippies use?
I know nothing of the support for the POWER arch out there now... if you do, would you say it could be improved? is "corporate whim" stifling open support for them? Last I messed with POWER i couldn't find docs for what I needed and so just stuck with Intel Sparc and Alpha. (The last two were still viable market presences then; to give an idea of how long ago this was)
Re: Keeping POWER relevant in the open source world
#6Can someone tell me where I can read more on what Power exactly is?
Re: Keeping POWER relevant in the open source world
#7If i had a "different" ISA to market, I'd think the very first priority would be to have excellent free compilers for it, be they FOSS or not. Write our own and give them away if we gotta. Remove every barrier to people using your product that you can. IBM doesn't think that way. They're probably using "the longhair hippies can't use this hardware" as a selling point.
The IBM XL compilers have had a free to download community version for a little while now [1]. They also appear to be adopting LLVM [2].
1. https://www.ibm.com/products/xl-cpp-linux-compiler-power
2. https://community.ibm.com/community/user/power/blogs/si-yuan...
Re: Keeping POWER relevant in the open source world
#8Can someone tell me where I can read more on what Power exactly is?
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/powerpc-architecture/
Geek for geek. Otherwise try wiki. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC
Used in old apple before replaced by intel. In one console.
Re: Keeping POWER relevant in the open source world
#9Can someone tell me where I can read more on what Power exactly is?
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/powerpc-architecture/ Geek for geek. Otherwise try wiki. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPC Used in old apple before replaced by intel. In one console.
PowerPC is a derivative of the original POWER architecture by IBM.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_POWER_instruction_set_ar...
Re: Keeping POWER relevant in the open source world
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
TIL LLVM and gcc are not excellent free compilers and useless for longhair hippies. What do your hippies use?
I know nothing of the support for the POWER arch out there now... if you do, would you say it could be improved? is "corporate whim" stifling open support for them? Last I messed with POWER i couldn't find docs for what I needed and so just stuck with Intel Sparc and Alpha. (The last two were still viable market presences then; to give an idea of how long ago this was)
... so you "know nothing", but started the discussion by making a strong claim to the contrary, seriously?
The article already lays out the field: The infrastructure groundwork is done (compilers, linux distros, ...), in no small part thanks to IBM funding such efforts. The main limit is hardware availability and overall mindshare, not infrastructure. If you have a reason to develop for POWER it's easy and reasonably well documented in my experience, the problem for the ecosystem is that few people have such reasons. (i.e. you're either an enterprise supplier like SAP or a bunch of nerds at an uni or with a raptor box at home, little inbetween)