Re: [Xen-devel] Sparc32/64 porting effort, interest?

[Tristan Gingold <Tristan.Gingold@xxxxxxxx>]

Le Samedi 05 AoÃt 2006 23:05, Blue Swirl a Ãcrit :
> Hi,
>
> I've developed some bits for Qemu and OpenBIOS Sparc32/64 versions and I
> know their internals. Maybe I could use that knowledge to port Xen to Sparc
> platforms.
>
> Can somone guesstimate what kind of effort would be needed for Sparc32 port
> targeted at hardware emulated by Qemu (SS5), for example?
>
> Are there other developers interested in Sparc port?

Big questions!

Which hardware are you targetting ?  Sparc or SparcV9?

Sparc doesn't have a three level protection mechanism.  So adding a VMM can be 
tricky.  PowerPc people may have ideas to handle this case.
On the pros side, sparc doesn't have an arch-defined MMU, so you can create 
you own para-virtualized MMU fitting well into Xen.

AFAIK, only Niagara has a three level protection.  Maybe only niagara makes 
sense for Xen.

Porting Xen requires a very good knowledge of the CPU (and of Xen internals of 
course).  PowerPC people may give you a better time estimation; a rough one 
may be <1 year to run dom0 and <1 year to run domU.

At the last XenSummit, there was at least one people from Sun.  I don't know 
wether other developers are interested.

Tristan.

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