Re: Is it time to deprecate arm26 support (for NetBSD 7.0?

["Richard Earnshaw (home)" <richard.earnshaw%buzzard.freeserve.co.uk@localhost>]

On 2 Aug 2012, at 23:53, Matt Thomas <matt%3am-software.com@localhost> wrote:

> 
> On Aug 2, 2012, at 3:44 PM, Richard Earnshaw (home) wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On 1 Aug 2012, at 09:01, David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost> wrote:
>> 
>>> Would it make sense to split the arm ports into 'current' and 'legacy'
>>> by architecture and pick a new minimum architecture (ARMv6?) for the
>>> current ports. It could also be a good point to make any ABI
>>> changes...
>> 
>> An EABI conforming port with hard float sounds like a good proposition for 
>> use with modern hw.
> 
> What is the earliest commonly available arm with a hard VFP that 
> was available that is compatible with armv6/v7 compatible VFP's?
> 
> I was thinking adding a machine arch of "armless" for those
> pre that "first VPF compatible arm".  And making arm reflect
> newer hardware.

VFP was first introduced with v5, but there are very few chips of that era that 
used it.

Advanced SIMD (Neon) wasn't added until v7; though that shares the hard float 
ABI.  Thumb2 was also effectively only available from v7.

Apart from Debian, many of the Linux distros are now targeting v7+VFP as their 
baseline.

R.