[PATCH] Support VMX128 Instruction for PowerPC

[Sebastian Biallas]

Nick Clifton schrieb:
> Hi Sebastian,
> 
>> Nope, I don't have access to the official documentation and I guess you
>> have to sign an NDA or something to get it.
> 
> This worries me.  If the designers of the VMX128 instruction set have 
> not publicly released their ISA then using unofficial information in 
> this way may be a breach of their copyright.

I don't think an ISA is protected by copyright. Maybe you can patent it, 
but then you have to disclose it.

> Also - do you have a binutils copyright assignment on file with the FSF? 

Not yet.

> Without such an assignment we could not consider accepting your patch.

Well, my patch contains virtually no code, so I thought it isn't worth 
the legal stuff. But if it's needed, I'll get the assignment.

>> Should there an option like "-mxenon" which resembles the xenon cpu or
>> should there be a modifier like "-mvmx128" which selectively actives the
>> VMX128 instruction set?
> 
> Go with "-mvmx128".  That is the name of the ISA extension.  There may 
> well be other CPUs in the future which support this extension, so using 
> "-mxenon" might become obsolete one day.

I'm still a little bit unsure here: The disassembler has no -maltivec 
option, it will disassemble AltiVec instructions by default ("For 
convenience"). So, should it also disassemble VMX128 instructions by 
default?