> It seems likely to me that no new ARM processors will ever be designed
> with the old FPA interface (it isn't even mentioned in the ARM ARM, and as
> one colleague put it - the FPA is dead and the soner it goes away the
> better).  Even with existing processors, only the ARM7500FE has been
> shipped with an FPA in significant numbers, and on netbsd we still don't
> make a use of it.
>
> So, to the question.  If I knock up a hack to the compiler and assembler
> so that for NetBSD/ARM/ELF they change to a pure little-endian floating
> point format, would there be any objections?

I would like to just mention that on my list of projects is a replacement
softfloat library for my ARM7500FE that uses the FPA, so that I can
squeeze a bit more out of the machine.  However, I suspect that I'm alone
in this desire (I do a fair bit of number crunching).

That said, I've been meaning to do this for nearly two years now, so don't
let me stand in the way of progress ;-)

Cheers,

David.