PPC/MCA RS/6000 port ?

Gabriel Paubert paubert at iram.es
Tue Mar 21 07:45:05 EST 2000


On Sun, 19 Mar 2000, David Edelsohn wrote:

> 	The PPC601 was a POWER architecture chip with additional user-mode
> PowerPC instructions.  It was based on the existing RSC (RIOS Single Chip)
> processor that IBM already was using and allowed the first PowerPC chip
> implementation to be developed and deployed very rapidly.  The supervisor
> state of the chip was all POWER architecture, not PowerPC Books II and
> III.  The direct store segments were a way to access special devices on
> the I/O bus.

Actually I thought that the supervisor mode of the 601 was a mixture of
POWER and PPC. I read somewhere that the hash table implementation of the
POWER was very different for example (and POWER had only SPR 0 to 31
while PPCs, including 601, have many more).

Have a look at the code, there are quite a lot of tests for 601 specific
differences (for cache control operations, to avoid touching HID0,
different BATs). And a few ugly things like using the decrementer even in
cases where the tb/rtc would be more appropriate IMHO but the wraparound
at 1e9 of 601's RTCL would be awkward to handle.

However, if the use direct store segments is _unavoidable_, significant
kernel modifications are required.

	Gabriel.


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