PATCH: support for NEC SX architecture

Erich Focht efocht@hpce.nec.com
Thu Jun 4 17:04:00 GMT 2009


Hi Dave,

Dave Korn wrote:
> Jaka Močnik wrote:
>> On Wed, 2009-06-03 at 15:39 +0100, Dave Korn wrote:
>>> All of a sudden I'm uncertain whether it's suitable to include support
>>> for a somewhat private undocumented target in FSF sources.  I don't know
>>> if there's a policy about it but it stands out from other targets in this
>>> regard.  Do you have any idea how many of these supercomputers there are
>>> in use out there?
>> well, the sources are GPLed, implemented independently of any existing, 
>> proprietary code, and well documented. the submission has also been 
>> approved by erich (cc-ed above).
> 
>   Erich, is there any chance at all NEC could be persuaded to change policy
> and release the CPU and ISA documentation?  That would be the ideal situation.

since every customer gets the documentation and most of the programmers 
who request it get a quick reference guide, we didn't think this is a 
problem. There's no place on the docs stating "do not disclose" or 
"secret" (though: reproduction rights stay with the company, as usual 
for books). But I see the problem: nobody could just start coding SX 
assembler with just the info we have on the sx-gcc page. So we'll do two 
things: start improving the docs on the sx-gcc web page and find out 
about possibilities to put the official SX CPU docs somewhere onto the 
web. This might take a while...

Best regards,
Erich



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