socppc q: How big a challenge would it be to support QorIQ PPC

[Tinker]

Hi,

Just for me to get an idea, how complex would it be to support Freescale
QorIQ such as the P2020 used in http://routerboard.com/RB1100AHx2 , or
P4080 or P5020?


These are the next version chip of what socppc supports already [1].

These chips are neat as they're fast, have ECC RAM and 3x PCI Express
controllers. The P2020 costs ~~50-70 USD, P4080 ~~100-40 USD, and P5020
~170-250 USD.

Thanks,
Tinker

[1] The current socppc [2] platform supports the MicroTik RouterBOARD
RB600A which runs the Freescale PowerQUICC MPC8343,
and the (now discontinued?) Thecus N1200 which runs the Freescale
PowerQUICC MPC8347.
The whole PowerQUICC series is being discontinued to be replaced by the
QorIQ CPU:s [3].

[2] http://www.openbsd.org/socppc.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerQUICC#PowerQUICC_III

[Alex Perez]

Hi,
Just for me to get an idea, how complex would it be to support Freescale QorIQ such as the P2020 used in http://routerboard.com/RB1100AHx2 , or P4080 or P5020?

Well, given that P5020 support is going in to FreeBSD mainline as we speak, at least on the P5020 front, if someone would like to bring over that codebase, it shouldn’t be immensely difficult.

These are the next version chip of what socppc supports already [1].
These chips are neat as they're fast, have ECC RAM and 3x PCI Express controllers. The P2020 costs ~~50-70 USD, P4080 ~~100-40 USD, and P5020 ~170-250 USD.
Thanks,
Tinker
[1] The current socppc [2] platform supports the MicroTik RouterBOARD RB600A which runs the Freescale PowerQUICC MPC8343,
and the (now discontinued?) Thecus N1200 which runs the Freescale PowerQUICC MPC8347.
The whole PowerQUICC series is being discontinued to be replaced by the QorIQ CPU:s [3].
[2] http://www.openbsd.org/socppc.html
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerQUICC#PowerQUICC_III

[Matthew Weigel]

Post by Tinker
Hi,
Just for me to get an idea, how complex would it be to support Freescale
QorIQ such as the P2020 used in http://routerboard.com/RB1100AHx2 , or
P4080 or P5020?

The P2 series poses more significant problems, the e500v2 core in them
uses a different FPU with different instructions- it would basically be
a different userland platform, you couldn't share binaries between an
RB600-A and a RB1100-AHx2.

The P3 and P4 series (which includes the P2040, confusingly) use the
e500mc core, which has userland compatibility with the existing OpenBSD
powerpc userland. The P5 series uses the e5500 core which adds some
64-bit things but is backward compatible (if memory serves then you
could even expect a kernel compiled for e500mc to run on an e5500, but
I'm not 100% certain).

The harder thing is to find something out there that uses a P2040,
P2041, P3041, or P4080 to get started with.