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Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 14:13:58 -0500 (EST)
From: Todd Vierling <tv@pobox.com>
To: Ken Nakata <kenn@synap.ne.jp>
cc: thorpej@nas.nasa.gov, netbsd-advocacy@NetBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Community Issues ** LONG ** 
In-Reply-To: <19990223020110R.kenn@synap.ne.jp>
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.05.9902221407410.27050-100000@duhnet.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Ken Nakata wrote:

: > No, they have not done SPARC.
: 
: Just out of curiosity.  I've heard Sun has done a port of FreeBSD to
: SPARC.  Is it true?  When I heard it, I thought it was a shame they
: didn't just take NetBSD/sparc.  Would it be possible they didn't know
: any better than porting an OS when there's a perfectly fine OS already 
: running on their platform?

Actually, it had to do with porting to the *Ultra*SPARC, which is pretty
well different when running in `native mode' than the rest of the SPARCs.

Just for starters, it has a 64-bit address bus, which in an instant makes
the programming challenges much like those for an Alpha.  (Solaris's
userland on the uSPARC is 32-bit, as it's the same userland that they use
for the other SPARC chips.  Therefore the processor runs in a sort of
"compatibility" mode.)

There was a discussion here about it some time ago.  Unfortunately, Sun
didn't care much for NetBSD thanks to FreeBSD's name recognition--and they
went about working on FreeBSD. What work they have done, I have no idea.  
However, I have strong suspicions that Eduardo will have NetBSD/sparc64 up
to snuff sooner than they'll get FreeBSD to production quality.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)