ubuntu-mips team mailing list archive

[Kai-Cheung Leung <kcleung@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I am working on concurrent programming, and have seen many cases where
memory well exceeding 4GB is needed for a single application.  So in
an OS with n32 userland and n64 kernel, in order to run that program,
do we just make an n64 version of the required libraries and then link
that application to these n64 libraries?  Is this all it takes to run
that particular n64 program?

If so, then do you (and Michael) mean that for our Ubuntu Loongson
port, libraries can be n32-based, but all we need to do is to add n64
versions of:
- glibc
- blas and other maths / science related libraries

and initially we don't need to make *all* libraries available in n64

If I an correct, it looks attractive to me.

Cheers,

Kai-cheung

On Sun, Aug 2, 2009 at 3:52 PM, LIU Qi<liuqi82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 02, 2009 at 02:06:32PM +1200, Kai-Cheung Leung wrote:
>  > However there are many applications , like what you said - database
>  > servers, and an increasing number scientific modelling (such as
>  > octave, scilab, matlab etc), datamining and bioinformatics
>  > applications that can very easily take > 4GB!!!  And these
>  > applications are the ones which are likely to run on clusters, or
>  > GRID, of loongson multicore boxes.  Loongson is targetting very
>  > heavily on these scientific / engineering markets.
> I am sorry for the late response. I am getting really busy these days. I
> agree with Michael. 64-bit kernel with n32 userland will be good enough.
> These programs including scientific, database applications are corner
> cases. If someone really needs, we or they could compile a n64 version
> and the n64 program also runs on our platform.
>  >
>  > Suppoose if the system has n64 kernel and it has both n32 and n64
>  > glibc, then would it be possible for n32 and n64 applications to
>  > co-exist?  In this case, applications that may need more than 4G can
>  > compile with n64 and link to the n64 glibc (and other n64 libraries)
> Yes, that is possible. And for now the Debian mips o32 port indeed has
> n32 libraries, such as glibc and so on.
>
>  > In this case, it would be difficult to maintain n32 and n64 versions
>  > of *all* libraries in the repository!
> I don't think so. Only the really necessary packages will be maintained
> with two ABI.
>  >
>  > If n32 and n64 cannot coexist easily, then perhaps we can make them
>  > separately.  n32 for netbook and desktop, n64 for supercomputing.  As
>  > they are for different markets.  However do you think we are asking
>  > Canonical for too much to maintain both n32 and n64?
> Just n32, I think.
>
>  >
>  > If you think the last option is feasible, then once the Chinese
>  > students have made the Debian base port, we can immediately roll out
>  > our Ubuntu n32 for the netbook / desktop market.
>  >
>  > However to target the database server and supercomputing markets, we
>  > still need to port Ubuntu to n64.
>  >
>  > What do you guys think?
> I agree with Michael on this issue: we should start from mipsel n32 port
> since its good performance and the unnecessity of mips n64 port. The n32
> is just good enough, I think.
>
> Kai-Cheung: What do you still worry about? Let us discuss more on that.
>
> --
>  LIU Qi
>
>  liuqi82@xxxxxxxxx
>  liuqi@xxxxxxxxxx
>
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