Re: Porting to IBM Risc 6000

[Jochen Kunz <jkunz%unixag-kl.fh-kl.de@localhost>]

On 2002.08.08 18:18 Matt Thomas wrote:

> It depends.  does the B50 have OFW or not?
I did a bit more research yesterday, err, today morning. From the
"RS/6000 7046 Model B50 Handbook", 
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/pubs/pdfs/redbooks/sg247046.pdf
page 122, chapter 5.4:
\begin{cite}
The RS/6000 Platform Architecture (RPA)
[...]
The RS/6000 7046 Model B50 is RPA compliant. 
[...]
The RPA is essentially a combination of its predecessor, the PowerPC
Microprocessor Common Hardware Reference Platform (shortend by the
industry to be known as the PowerPC Platform) and some IBM architecture
extensions. 
[...]
Prior to IBMs RPA, an alliance existed between Apple, IBM and Motorola
that developed a common hardware platform with the purpose of defining a
system that would become the pervasive open industry standard, from
single user to server configurations. As a result of this alliance, the
PowerPC Platform emerged. The PowerPC Platform, previously known as
CHRP, is a superset of the earlier PowerPC Platform Specification (PReP)
system architecture. 
\end{cite}

And http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/SG245139/5139c31.htm explains:
\begin{cite}
3.1 Finding Out about Your System

RS/6000 servers are available in a variety of models. An RS/6000 system
can be single processor or multiprocessor. Currently, models comply to a
number of architecture specifications such as Micro Channel, PowerPC
Reference Platform (PREP), Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP),
and RS/6000 Platform Architecture (RPA).

The hardware platform type is an abstraction that allows machines to be
grouped according to fundamental configuration characteristics such as
the number of processors and/or I/O bus structure. Machines with
different hardware platform types will have basic differences in the way
their devices are dynamically configured at boot time. Currently
available hardware platforms, which are able to be differentiated by
software, in RS/6000 family of processors are:

rs6k Micro Channel-based uni-processor models 
rs6ksmp Micro Channel-based symmetric multiprocessor models 
rspc ISA-bus models 
chrp PCI-bus models

In order to determine the hardware platform type on your machine, enter
the following command:

bootinfo -p

This will return rs6k, rs6ksmp, rspc, or chrp as output. 
\end{cite}


All the later PREP / CHRP / RPA Machines belong to the same arch,
because PREP is a subset of CHRP that in turn is a subset of RPA. (As I
understand this.) So I think all this machines should be supported by
port-prep. (And port-prep should be renamed to port-rpa or port-rs6000?)
-- 



tschüß,
         Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/