4 ms·

It has an arm64 CPU. It looks like this will be the first cheap, easily obtainable and hackable (?) arm64 hardware out there. I'm writing the arm64 Go compiler

by 4ad 12y ago

It has an arm64 CPU. It looks like this will be the first cheap, easily obtainable and hackable (?) arm64 hardware out there. I'm writing the arm64 Go compiler. I wonder if it's feasible to start testing on this machine too (e.g. how open it really is, how hard is to get a sane working environment, etc).

WildUtah 12y ago
You could jailbreak an iPhone 5S for a year now.
- 4ad 12y ago
  I'm interesting in running Go on arm64 servers, so Linux. Linux/arm64 hardware is not widely available, but it is available if you need it. I'm interested in this tablet because then I could have my own arm64 hardware, with Linux, to test on. Right now I don't own the hardware that I use. A darwin/arm64 port doesn't interest me. After I will have finished linux/arm64, I am sure someone else will do darwin/arm64 soon, and it won't be too difficult. Arm64 is difficult because I need to write a new compiler, but once we have that, adding another target to an already supported operating system is a breeze. On top of that darwin/arm64 would never become an official port if it required a jailbroken device (same reason why there's no official darwin/arm, although that might change).
fit2rule 12y ago
Put Linux on this and you've got a very viable development machine. I look forward to one day running arm64 Go on this machine in the near future! :) (Among other things..)
- 4ad 12y ago
  Yeah, the "put Linux on this" thing concerns me. In principle it's not that hard; in practice someone has to do the work. I don't want to be the guy that does the work :). Hopefully somebody will do it soon.
  - josteink 12y ago
    It boots a perfectly ordinary Linux-kernel, but with a non-standard initrd and init-sequence. It's a Nexus so the bootloader will be open and unlockable, and you will have the source available for the kernel too. That's not the same as having access to all the userland utils and a full, ready distro. No. But it's a pretty open end with almost no restrictions, completely unlike anything made by Apple so far. Yan can boot the device with any kernel and initrd you like, you can transfer files to the devices and test your compiled arm64 binaries from a terminal. You will be met with zero technical restrictions or locked doors.
rwmj 12y ago
Before I got my Mustang (:-) I was hacking on the OCaml arm64 compiler backend using this technique. The article describes setting it up for Fedora. Follow through the links for how to do this on SUSE and Debian. It's fairly reasonable as a userspace dev environment. http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/how-to-run-aarch64-binaries-on-an-x86-64-host-using-qemu-userspace-emulation/ http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/how-to-run-aarch64-bina...
- 4ad 12y ago
  Yes, I started with QEMU user emulation. It was so lame (lots of bugs in QEMU; both related to unsupported instructions and other miscellany that affected Go) that I just wrote my own arm64 emulator eventually (didn't take long, it's a variant of Plan 9's [5kqv]i user space emulators, I forgot to mention that all this work started on Plan 9). Now I have hardware but my emulator still gets its use, it's a great debugger too.
nteon 12y ago
Are you working on this code publicly? I would love to take a look, as I've become quite interested in the gc compiler lately.
- 4ad 12y ago
  Sorry, this is not publicly available yet (soon!), but if you have a bitbucket account I can give you access.
corysama 12y ago
You should have a look at Nvidia's K1 dev kit. (edit: guess that's not 64 bit...) https://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-tk1 https://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-tk1 https://developer.nvidia.com/tegra-development https://developer.nvidia.com/tegra-development Nvidia's dev support team is great. Using the Tegra Dev pack on a Shield is by far the best NDK environment I've found.

by 4ad 12y ago

WildUtah 12y ago

You could jailbreak an iPhone 5S for a year now.

4ad 12y ago
I'm interesting in running Go on arm64 servers, so Linux. Linux/arm64 hardware is not widely available, but it is available if you need it. I'm interested in this tablet because then I could have my own arm64 hardware, with Linux, to test on. Right now I don't own the hardware that I use. A darwin/arm64 port doesn't interest me. After I will have finished linux/arm64, I am sure someone else will do darwin/arm64 soon, and it won't be too difficult. Arm64 is difficult because I need to write a new compiler, but once we have that, adding another target to an already supported operating system is a breeze. On top of that darwin/arm64 would never become an official port if it required a jailbroken device (same reason why there's no official darwin/arm, although that might change).

fit2rule 12y ago

Put Linux on this and you've got a very viable development machine. I look forward to one day running arm64 Go on this machine in the near future! :) (Among other things..)

4ad 12y ago
Yeah, the "put Linux on this" thing concerns me. In principle it's not that hard; in practice someone has to do the work. I don't want to be the guy that does the work :). Hopefully somebody will do it soon.
- josteink 12y ago
  It boots a perfectly ordinary Linux-kernel, but with a non-standard initrd and init-sequence. It's a Nexus so the bootloader will be open and unlockable, and you will have the source available for the kernel too. That's not the same as having access to all the userland utils and a full, ready distro. No. But it's a pretty open end with almost no restrictions, completely unlike anything made by Apple so far. Yan can boot the device with any kernel and initrd you like, you can transfer files to the devices and test your compiled arm64 binaries from a terminal. You will be met with zero technical restrictions or locked doors.

rwmj 12y ago

Before I got my Mustang (:-) I was hacking on the OCaml arm64 compiler backend using this technique. The article describes setting it up for Fedora. Follow through the links for how to do this on SUSE and Debian. It's fairly reasonable as a userspace dev environment. http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/how-to-run-aarch64-binaries-on-an-x86-64-host-using-qemu-userspace-emulation/ http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/12/22/how-to-run-aarch64-bina...

4ad 12y ago
Yes, I started with QEMU user emulation. It was so lame (lots of bugs in QEMU; both related to unsupported instructions and other miscellany that affected Go) that I just wrote my own arm64 emulator eventually (didn't take long, it's a variant of Plan 9's [5kqv]i user space emulators, I forgot to mention that all this work started on Plan 9). Now I have hardware but my emulator still gets its use, it's a great debugger too.

nteon 12y ago

Are you working on this code publicly? I would love to take a look, as I've become quite interested in the gc compiler lately.

4ad 12y ago
Sorry, this is not publicly available yet (soon!), but if you have a bitbucket account I can give you access.

corysama 12y ago

You should have a look at Nvidia's K1 dev kit. (edit: guess that's not 64 bit...) https://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-tk1 https://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-tk1 https://developer.nvidia.com/tegra-development https://developer.nvidia.com/tegra-development Nvidia's dev support team is great. Using the Tegra Dev pack on a Shield is by far the best NDK environment I've found.