ABI, I don't get it...

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Sun, 14 Aug 2016, Paul_Koning@Dell.com wrote:

> > with a toolchain that was supposedly 64-bit native, hard-float.  Why
> > the floating point selection is soft, I cannot say.
> 
> Perhaps because some other MIPS64 machines don't have float?  The 
> Sibyte series comes to mind.  We use soft-float for that reason, even 
> though XLR and XLP do have it.

 FYI, the SiByte/Broadcom SB-1 processor cores do have an FPU albeit IIRC 
early (A0?) steppings had fatal errata making the unit less than usable 
(they also had other issues making them usable even less).  This may have 
been the reason you have chosen a software configuration which avoids the 
use of the FPU with these processors.  Later revisions were fine.  I've 
used the FPU with a B2 stepping SB-1 myself with no issues; there was a 
later C0 revision as well.

 Ralf (cc-ed) may remember a bit more about the story here.

 FWIW,

  Maciej