Subject: Re: mods for proposed port 'tsarm'
To: Jesse Off <joff@embeddedARM.com>
From: Richard Earnshaw <Richard.Earnshaw@buzzard.freeserve.co.uk>
List: port-arm
Date: 12/06/2004 18:15:51
> Another thing worth mentioning is that the Cirrus processors it uses does
> have a non-standard ARM FPU coprocessor that the latest GCC toolchains
> 3.4+ do support.  Conceivably, you would want an appropriately compiled
> userland to take advantage when the toolchain catches up.  Would a port be
> appropriate if it were to the Cirrus ARM variant, e.g. "cirrus", "clarm"
> (cirrus-logic arm)?

GCC currently only supports the Cirrus FPU with a different ABI (one that 
returns floating point values in a maverick register).  If/when it can do 
it without changing the ABI then it might be appropriate to compile native 
libraries to take advantage of the accelerated floating point support.

This is important because it means that standard packages will continue to 
run on the port and only those that really benefit from the additional 
hardware have to be rebuilt.

You should look at how this is done for the VFP in the gcc 4 development 
code.

R.