5 ms·

I can't see much of a reason to even support such an old processor at this point.

by davikr 4y ago

fulafel 4y ago
680x0 are a newer ISA than x86 in a way, though it was 32 bit from the start so didn't need revising when 32 bit hw appeared.
eschneider 4y ago
Embedded systems
- notwokeno 4y ago
  Is anyone making any new m68k chips these days? I looked for a hobby project earlier this year and it looked like Freescale was doing their best to sunset it.
  - eschneider 4y ago
    Not sure, but there are a lot of them in the field and, well, maintenance is a thing.
  - 0xcde4c3db 4y ago
    I went through a similar process a few years back. As far as I know, there is some extended availability through Rochester Electronics, but I don't know if anyone's still actually fabbing them or if they're dicing/packaging out of a stockpile of NOS wafers or what. I'm not aware of anyone still having a 68K/ColdFire chip that is "recommended for new designs". I also read somewhere that the 2011 earthquake+tsunami destroyed the only fab that had still been producing the original (well, CMOS) 68K-family chips, and Freescale had been planning to close that fab anyway.
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    The Vampire accelerator by Apollo Computers (which is FPGA-based AIUI) is not officially an m68k chip, but it's been developed as a drop-in replacement.
johnklos 4y ago
That's because you lack imagination, you lack knowledge about how we've gotten to where we are, and you lack understanding about the value of keeping software portable. There are many, many reasons for maintaining support for alternate architectures. How many problems would be baked in if we always had this attitude? Back in the day when "all the world is an i386", people complained when told about how their code has bugs when compiled on 64 bit processors. Imagine if we had baked in all of those 32-bit-centric bugs that broke compiling on 64 bit. People do the same thing now when told their code doesn't compile cleanly on 32 bit, on PowerPC, on ARM, on big endian, et cetera. Imagine if we now acted like "all the world is an amd64", and lots of code was simply broken on aarch64? If you were alive and paid attention through other transitions, you'd understand how every example of programmers being "forced" to care about the correctness and portability of their code has paid dividends years later.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  You're arguing a very different point. Linux supports a whole lot of architectures that are in active use, and nobody is suggesting changing that.
  - ryao 4y ago
    Evidently, m68k is still in use, otherwise the recent change would not have been noticed.
    - jabl 4y ago
      Indeed. The kernel isn't a museum, code or architectures that aren't used can and will get dropped. But the converse is also true, if somebody steps up to regularly test and fix issues in some code it can stay. Even if said somebody happens to be a bunch of retrocomputing enthusiasts and not a zillion dollar corporation.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      How many users do you think there are? I put "active" in there to contrast from a small/legacy amount. Though I wasn't making a definitive statement on which category m68k belongs to in the first place.
brohee 4y ago
You can still buy a Coldfire (now from NXP, after Motorola and Freescale) and I suspect it would have used that strcmp() implementation. The 68k family is not completely dead.
- bierjunge 4y ago
  IIRC Texas Instruments uses 68k CPU's for their calculators. I'm pretty sure my TI Voyage 200 I've bought in highschool (15+ years ago) uses one and it's still great.
  - loeg 4y ago
    The older 9x and 89s do, yeah. The new ones just run ARM and emulate the older chips.
- fredoralive 4y ago
  However NXP have Coldfire on a "Legacy MPU/MCUs" page, which doesn't exactly show them pushing for new design wins though. It's not dead, but it doesn't really have a future...
spacedcowboy 4y ago
Meanwhile I'm writing a compiler for the 6502....
thomasjb 4y ago
It is available [1] as a core for FPGAs (possibly used in some obscure ASICs to boot), and it is very possible that those applications need fairly current support. The ColdFire processors came in up to 300MHz, and modern FPGAs could probably enable even higher speeds. There are variants with Ethernet [2], so security is probably a real concern. I would very much like to learn how to get one 1) running on an FPGA 2) running Linux and then 3) set it up to automatically run new builds. [1] https://silvaco.com/design-ip/embedded-processors/ https://silvaco.com/design-ip/embedded-processors/ [2] https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1703092.pdf https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1703092.pdf
- duskwuff 4y ago
  ColdFire isn't precisely 680x0. It has a similar instruction set, but it isn't identical, and (crucially) it doesn't have an external memory/peripheral bus. As far as I'm aware, there are no longer any "true" 680x0 parts in production. NXP stopped production of the 68SEC000 in 2014; anything still in stock is at least that old.

I can't see much of a reason to even support such an old processor at this point.

by davikr 4y ago

I can't see much of a reason to even support such an old processor at this point.

680x0 are a newer ISA than x86 in a way, though it was 32 bit from the start so didn't need revising when 32 bit hw appeared.

eschneider 4y ago

Embedded systems

notwokeno 4y ago
Is anyone making any new m68k chips these days? I looked for a hobby project earlier this year and it looked like Freescale was doing their best to sunset it.
- eschneider 4y ago
  Not sure, but there are a lot of them in the field and, well, maintenance is a thing.
- 0xcde4c3db 4y ago
  I went through a similar process a few years back. As far as I know, there is some extended availability through Rochester Electronics, but I don't know if anyone's still actually fabbing them or if they're dicing/packaging out of a stockpile of NOS wafers or what. I'm not aware of anyone still having a 68K/ColdFire chip that is "recommended for new designs". I also read somewhere that the 2011 earthquake+tsunami destroyed the only fab that had still been producing the original (well, CMOS) 68K-family chips, and Freescale had been planning to close that fab anyway.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  The Vampire accelerator by Apollo Computers (which is FPGA-based AIUI) is not officially an m68k chip, but it's been developed as a drop-in replacement.

johnklos 4y ago

That's because you lack imagination, you lack knowledge about how we've gotten to where we are, and you lack understanding about the value of keeping software portable. There are many, many reasons for maintaining support for alternate architectures. How many problems would be baked in if we always had this attitude? Back in the day when "all the world is an i386", people complained when told about how their code has bugs when compiled on 64 bit processors. Imagine if we had baked in all of those 32-bit-centric bugs that broke compiling on 64 bit. People do the same thing now when told their code doesn't compile cleanly on 32 bit, on PowerPC, on ARM, on big endian, et cetera. Imagine if we now acted like "all the world is an amd64", and lots of code was simply broken on aarch64? If you were alive and paid attention through other transitions, you'd understand how every example of programmers being "forced" to care about the correctness and portability of their code has paid dividends years later.

Dylan16807 4y ago
You're arguing a very different point. Linux supports a whole lot of architectures that are in active use, and nobody is suggesting changing that.
- ryao 4y ago
  Evidently, m68k is still in use, otherwise the recent change would not have been noticed.
  - jabl 4y ago
    Indeed. The kernel isn't a museum, code or architectures that aren't used can and will get dropped. But the converse is also true, if somebody steps up to regularly test and fix issues in some code it can stay. Even if said somebody happens to be a bunch of retrocomputing enthusiasts and not a zillion dollar corporation.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    How many users do you think there are? I put "active" in there to contrast from a small/legacy amount. Though I wasn't making a definitive statement on which category m68k belongs to in the first place.

brohee 4y ago

You can still buy a Coldfire (now from NXP, after Motorola and Freescale) and I suspect it would have used that strcmp() implementation. The 68k family is not completely dead.

bierjunge 4y ago
IIRC Texas Instruments uses 68k CPU's for their calculators. I'm pretty sure my TI Voyage 200 I've bought in highschool (15+ years ago) uses one and it's still great.
- loeg 4y ago
  The older 9x and 89s do, yeah. The new ones just run ARM and emulate the older chips.
fredoralive 4y ago
However NXP have Coldfire on a "Legacy MPU/MCUs" page, which doesn't exactly show them pushing for new design wins though. It's not dead, but it doesn't really have a future...

spacedcowboy 4y ago

Meanwhile I'm writing a compiler for the 6502....

thomasjb 4y ago

It is available [1] as a core for FPGAs (possibly used in some obscure ASICs to boot), and it is very possible that those applications need fairly current support. The ColdFire processors came in up to 300MHz, and modern FPGAs could probably enable even higher speeds. There are variants with Ethernet [2], so security is probably a real concern. I would very much like to learn how to get one 1) running on an FPGA 2) running Linux and then 3) set it up to automatically run new builds. [1] https://silvaco.com/design-ip/embedded-processors/ https://silvaco.com/design-ip/embedded-processors/ [2] https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1703092.pdf https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1703092.pdf

duskwuff 4y ago
ColdFire isn't precisely 680x0. It has a similar instruction set, but it isn't identical, and (crucially) it doesn't have an external memory/peripheral bus. As far as I'm aware, there are no longer any "true" 680x0 parts in production. NXP stopped production of the 68SEC000 in 2014; anything still in stock is at least that old.