Subject: Re: NetBSD-Mach?
To: Andrew Cagney <cagney@tpgi.com.au>
From: David Edelsohn <dje@watson.ibm.com>
List: port-powerpc
Date: 12/13/1996 22:09:00
>>>>> Andrew Cagney writes:

Andrew> While I can see how emulations for Solaris/PPC and Linux/PPC would work
Andrew> (having being involved in an implementation).  I'm afraid that you would
Andrew> find AIX another kettle of fish.  Issues include POWER compatibility,
Andrew> that @*&#^$&*( slab of code at very low addresses, the use of the
Andrew> segment registers, ...

	AIX 3 is POWER architecture, but AIX 4 uses common-mode with only
the subset of instructions common to both POWER and PowerPC architecture,
along with calls to absolute functions at low addresses supplied by the
kernel to handle integer multiply, divide, and quotient.  Some early IBM
members of the Linux/PPC group already looked at this and had a plan to
provide compatibility and supply the exported AIX kernel symbols for system
calls.

David
===============================================================================
David Edelsohn                                      T.J. Watson Research Center
dje@watson.ibm.com                                  P.O. Box 218
+1 914 945 4364 (TL 862)                            Yorktown Heights, NY 10598