ubuntu-mips team mailing list archive

[Kai-Cheung Leung <kcleung@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi qiliu,

I have just read this article:

http://www.lemote.com/bbs/archiver/?tid-19444.html

It says that n32 model would be sufficient for most applications and
n32 uses the 32-bit addressing, "but uses some of the 64-bit features
in the CPU", thus increasing the performance by 25%.........


However it is very common now for memory of PCs to exceed 4GB.  My
intel C2Q already has 8GB DDR2 memory installed, wouldn't it now calls
for 64-bin addressing?

If this is true, then n64 is the architecture we need.  Are there any
efforts to port Debian to n64, which is also currently supported by
Oracle?

The wikipedia article claims that Loongson 2F already supports 64-bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson#Loongson_2F

Does it support n64?  If Loongson 2F already support n64, then would
it be a better idea to just port n64 to Ubuntu?  I know the Canonical
(Ubuntu's company) Management doesn't like to support architecture
that is going to be obsolete.   And 32-bit systems looks like to be
obsoleted very soon.  Moreover, Loongson 2x isn't that commercially
active anyway.  The real commercial release version is Loongson 3.

Supporting *one* architecture - n64 would have less headache than
supporting all three architectures (o32, n32, n64).  So should we take
the Apple OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) approach and only focus on the n64
architecture?  In this case, we may as well put the Ubuntu port on
hold and use all of our energy to get the

**Debian n64 mipsel base system + binutils + gcc + glibc**

up and running, then we only port n64 to Ubuntu?

Finally, is it true that n64 is compatible with both Loongson 2F and Loongson 3?

What do you think?  In this case, I may have more time to practice
bootstraping / making distribution from scratch and when the Debian
n64 is ready.

Cheers,

kcleung