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So, of the list of current platforms: alpha Digital Alpha-based systems amd64 AMD64-based systems armv7 ARM-based devices, such as BeagleBone

So, of the list of current platforms: alpha Digital Alpha-based systems amd64 AMD64-based systems armv7 ARM-based devices, such as BeagleBone, BeagleBoard, PandaBoard ES, Cubox-i, SABRE Lite, Nitrogen6x and Wandboard hppa Hewlett-Packard Precision Architecture (PA-RISC) systems i386 Standard PC and clones based on the Intel i386 architecture and compatible processors landisk IO-DATA Landisk systems (such as USL-5P) based on the SH4 cpu loongson Loongson 2E- and 2F-based systems, such as the Lemote Fuloong and Yeeloong, Gdium Liberty, etc. luna88k Omron LUNA-88K and LUNA-88K2 workstations macppc Apple New World PowerPC-based machines, from the iMac onwards octeon Cavium Octeon-based MIPS64 systems sgi SGI MIPS-based workstations socppc Freescale PowerPC SoC-based machines sparc64 Sun UltraSPARC and Fujitsu SPARC64 systems There still seem to be a few that aren't supported by LLVM

notaplumber 10y ago
OpenBSD has long included multiple system compilers as required for supported platforms, at one point gcc 4.2.1, gcc 3.3.6 and gcc 2.95.3 (!) were in the tree. OpenBSD 5.4 was the last version to include gcc2 for a.out/static lib platforms like vax. After 5.5 most platforms were ported to ELF and gcc3 or gcc4 (..if not memory constrained) by Miod Vallat, even when it meant writing compiler backends. At that point gcc2 was finally removed (..along with a lot of old a.out/static architecture cruft that had accumulated). Now that LLVM/Clang is in, the potentially viable platforms (i386/amd64/armv7?) can work toward switching, while gcc4 remains for the ones that can't yet. I believe m88k is only gcc3 platforms left, but there's a very passionate guy in Japan interested in keeping his OMRON LUNA-88K and LUNA-88K2 workstations alive. This may all seem strange, but OpenBSD has always strongly been against cross-compiling beyond perhaps initial platform bring up. This means being able to compile a release and packages on the physical machine must work.
- kev009 10y ago
  mips, ppc and sparc64 are in theory fine on llvm already, in practice there are issues but nothing that can't be worked through, especially given past work OpenBSD has shown on gcc. All 3 are commercially viable for at least a decade. m88k and sh4 are the odd ducks, and if there were a backend wow that would be painful to build llvm on natively :)
coredog64 10y ago
What is the value in continuing to support Alpha, SGI, and PA-RISC? Were they cool in their day? Sure. But the consumer router you use to hook up an O2 or an Octane to the internet has a more powerful MIPS CPU.
- notaplumber 10y ago
  There have been many advantages to running on different platforms, which have various quirks.. different endians, page sizes, strict alignment requirements, stack-grows-up machines (hppa). It also helps to have systems that are slow or have low memory, occasionally they hit bugs that are unnoticed on modern hardware. Alpha may have been interesting in that it had some peripheral similarities to PC machines, but were actual 64-bit computers in the 90s. For kernel driver hackers, popping in a PCI network card that was probably never tested on anything besides a x86 PC, getting it to pass packets, and then making it your home firewall, was a thing of beauty.
  - kristopolous 10y ago
    you interested in one? I got openbsd and openvms disks for you and the machine itself. You can have that beauty again. You can put it next to the HPPA you'll be getting as the door prize.
    - notaplumber 10y ago
      That's tempting, but I'm probably not nearby. If you're really offering hardware, SCSI disks etc. OpenBSD developers surely might jump at the chance. http://www.openbsd.org/want.html http://www.openbsd.org/want.html
  - danieldk 10y ago
    There have been many advantages to running on different platforms, which have various quirks.. different endians, page sizes, strict alignment requirements, stack-grows-up machines (hppa). I think that trying 'oddball' platforms indeed help shaking out bugs. But if that's the goal (rather than supporting the five users that still use such hardware), wouldn't it be more attractive to build pseudo-platforms in an emulator that simulate other architecture choices, and run it on fast and easy-to-get x86_64 hardware?

notaplumber 10y ago

OpenBSD has long included multiple system compilers as required for supported platforms, at one point gcc 4.2.1, gcc 3.3.6 and gcc 2.95.3 (!) were in the tree. OpenBSD 5.4 was the last version to include gcc2 for a.out/static lib platforms like vax. After 5.5 most platforms were ported to ELF and gcc3 or gcc4 (..if not memory constrained) by Miod Vallat, even when it meant writing compiler backends. At that point gcc2 was finally removed (..along with a lot of old a.out/static architecture cruft that had accumulated). Now that LLVM/Clang is in, the potentially viable platforms (i386/amd64/armv7?) can work toward switching, while gcc4 remains for the ones that can't yet. I believe m88k is only gcc3 platforms left, but there's a very passionate guy in Japan interested in keeping his OMRON LUNA-88K and LUNA-88K2 workstations alive. This may all seem strange, but OpenBSD has always strongly been against cross-compiling beyond perhaps initial platform bring up. This means being able to compile a release and packages on the physical machine must work.

kev009 10y ago
mips, ppc and sparc64 are in theory fine on llvm already, in practice there are issues but nothing that can't be worked through, especially given past work OpenBSD has shown on gcc. All 3 are commercially viable for at least a decade. m88k and sh4 are the odd ducks, and if there were a backend wow that would be painful to build llvm on natively :)

coredog64 10y ago

What is the value in continuing to support Alpha, SGI, and PA-RISC? Were they cool in their day? Sure. But the consumer router you use to hook up an O2 or an Octane to the internet has a more powerful MIPS CPU.

notaplumber 10y ago
There have been many advantages to running on different platforms, which have various quirks.. different endians, page sizes, strict alignment requirements, stack-grows-up machines (hppa). It also helps to have systems that are slow or have low memory, occasionally they hit bugs that are unnoticed on modern hardware. Alpha may have been interesting in that it had some peripheral similarities to PC machines, but were actual 64-bit computers in the 90s. For kernel driver hackers, popping in a PCI network card that was probably never tested on anything besides a x86 PC, getting it to pass packets, and then making it your home firewall, was a thing of beauty.
- kristopolous 10y ago
  you interested in one? I got openbsd and openvms disks for you and the machine itself. You can have that beauty again. You can put it next to the HPPA you'll be getting as the door prize.
  - notaplumber 10y ago
    That's tempting, but I'm probably not nearby. If you're really offering hardware, SCSI disks etc. OpenBSD developers surely might jump at the chance. http://www.openbsd.org/want.html http://www.openbsd.org/want.html
- danieldk 10y ago
  There have been many advantages to running on different platforms, which have various quirks.. different endians, page sizes, strict alignment requirements, stack-grows-up machines (hppa). I think that trying 'oddball' platforms indeed help shaking out bugs. But if that's the goal (rather than supporting the five users that still use such hardware), wouldn't it be more attractive to build pseudo-platforms in an emulator that simulate other architecture choices, and run it on fast and easy-to-get x86_64 hardware?