Linux Kernel Support For The Loongson-3

[chithanh]

And to say that a virtualized windows will run fast when qemu in emulation mode is used must be a joke. Not even running qemu-system-x86_64 on x86 is fast (used to emulate 64 bit systems even on 32 bit cpus).

It doesn't need to run "fast". It just needs to run at acceptable speed for some indispensable legacy x86 applications.

Don't forget that Loongson's purpose is not winning benchmarks (or fighting corporatism, for that matter). Its goal is achieving independence from foreign CPU imports.

You can use "Debian" for your Loongson hardware and inside of Debian you can Run QEMU and inside of QEMU you can run X86 Windows with hardware accelerated "x86".

More likely than what you describe is that the x86 emulation hardware acceleration is intended for qemu-user mode.

you can get a basic functional usable Linux desktop running on MIPS but don't expect to do much beyond basic web browsing, office work, or really anything that computers did back in the early 2000s. Even with a decent GPU with good drivers, people are still going to have to port everything.

Last I checked, almost the entire Debian archive is available on MIPS. What kind of porting do you feel is necessary?

[necro-lover]

Gee, that sounds like a lot of free software development money. Where exactly is it being spent ?

Last time i checked loongson do have a 0.0000x% market share even if they spend 25times more than amd the impact is small.

Obviously some went into modifying QEMU to use the x86 emulation instructions in the microcode, and modifying existing open source drivers to work on the Loongson CPU, but your comment seems to suggest there is a lot more going on. EnQuiring minds want to know

What do you expect from a market participant with a market share of 0.0000x%?

ye I know hitting children is what big boys from amd+intels do because they can not fight against a real enemy.

[schmidtbag]

Last I checked, almost the entire Debian archive is available on MIPS. What kind of porting do you feel is necessary?

Do any MIPS systems have OpenGL support? Because if they don't that's a pretty hefty chunk of packages that aren't available.

Putting gpu stuff aside, Maybe the entire stable release of MIPS is available but we all know how ancient that is, in Linux years anyway. I'm sure a lot of Sid or wheezy is available for MIPS but I'm sure it breaks more often than x86 or ARM. But, just because all, or most of Debian is available, it doesn't mean that has everything you need. There are plenty of packages that Debian doesn't offer on any platform, and not all of them are MIPS compatible.

In the open source world, just about anything can be ported but it doesn't mean someone has.

[necro-lover]

I'm aware of that. I didn't say you can't do this, what I'm saying is MIPS is really slow and basic so virtualization will suck, even on a quad core, and there is very little Linux desktop focus on MIPS. you can get a basic functional usable Linux desktop running on MIPS but don't expect to do much beyond basic web browsing, office work, or really anything that computers did back in the early 2000s. Even with a decent GPU with good drivers, people are still going to have to port everything.

Sure emulation is slow but its not the slowest CPU to do that because the loongson 3A can handle : Integer-x86,FPU-X87,MMX,SSE1 und SSE2 in hardware.
And your point was you can not run a windows to to get your freedom to choose ?
Do you need "Speed" for freedom of speech ?
Anyway yes loongson 3A is slow and loongson 3B-65nm was also slow even with 8cores but the found the broken bottle neck. the 32nm Loongson 3B do have a extra of 8mb L3 cache and more clock speed.

So why not just wait until the hardware is faster? The loongson is under development.
the 32nm 3B 8core loongson is the first with a real commercial impact.
But yes even that cpu will be slow. you maybe get the speed of a modern 4-5ghz x86 dualcore..

keeping them within their laws.

Nice try but loongson do not have a DRM system in the firmware... but future AMD cpus do have "TrustZone - ARM" and intel CPUs do have "Trusted Execution Technology"...

The (USA) CPUs do have active-DRM-TCPA to force the users into their laws WORLDWIDE.

But naive people like you think the "EVIL" chinese government do this.. LOOOOOOL.

Yes maybe thats the plan but in fact the USA do the same.
But maybe the only point is you like the US law more than the Chinese law?

I life in a official occupation zone "UNO official:enemy state" of the USA "Germany" and I trust the Chinese people more than my own or the US people.

Trust is something you can't get with a Police Raid at your home and I get a police raid an my home this year because I bought "Bus-Tickets" in the internet (no joke they break my constitutional right of a government free secure home because I bought Bus-Tickets from the Internet for 70€).
The prosecutor has closed the proceedings without any effect on me. but hell a police raid with 5-6 Police officers because 70€ ? and they needed 3-4 hours for me this means this "Raid" caused cost of more than ~ 1000-2000€ for nothing. to take away some bus tickets from me i bought in *faithful and believe* (really no joke i can scan the official Police-documents from the Raid).

So in fact our Law and Order country’s are a full joke.

"freedom of speech" is also against the law in germany you get 5 years of jail for babbling in germany (no this is not a joke there are 1000 of people in germany in jail because of babblin the wrong stuff).

and you talk about china LOL--

[crazycheese]

I am aware china (and North Korea) do have their own Linux distro that they moderate that allows them to freely distribute their censored computing laws.

I lawled!


Seriously, there was, is and will be informational warfire, but its between security agencies only. And both of them basically do the same thing.
If you would read up on how chinese firewall and all those media clone sites work, you will realise that in many places china versions offer much more freedom; there are only several things protected and they are all about politics.
Also, the whole hardware is way more open than intel, amd, nvidia or anything else. Its very welcomed development so long it stays open.

Basically Loongson is pretty stupid to rely on an amd chipset for gfx.

I think its the best pick as a start given the available choices.

[necro-lover]

Do any MIPS systems have OpenGL support?

Every mips system can handle openGL... some of them only with the CPU and some others with the GPU.
The newest loongson notebook to have a radeon hd3250 openGL3 gpu.

[schmidtbag]

@necro-lover
your name should be righteousness lover, since you seem to blatantly ignore what I'm saying and start spewing things I either made no reference to or are unrelated.

First of all, those instruction sets you mentioned aren't focused on virtualization, so it won't make it run faster. Besides, most of those are stuff the P4 had - there's a lot that MIPS is missing. I didn't say anything about freedom and/with windows. what I was saying is the Chinese government likes to censor things and (x86) windows offers a lot of choices of commercial software that they might not approve of. with android and windows RT, ARM will eventually be in the same category.

MIPS isn't fast for everyday desktop use because it wasn't supposed to be used that way, it just has the option. waiting for MIPS to prove it would be like waiting for motorcycles to tow small trailers. Sure it could be done but why not just get a vehicle that was supposed to do it from the beginning?

Also, I never said ANYTHING about a DRM. Once again, you're putting words in my mouth. What I was trying to say, which should have been obvious, was that MIPS being a relatively ignored platform for desktop use just simply doesn't have as much hardware or software attention as x86, PPC, or ARM. That being said, not everything will work on it, at least not without some effort.

I also said NOTHING about the Chinese government being evil. You accuse me of being naive but you're just simply being arrogant and ignorant. The Chinese have censorship laws. they don't allow all websites to be seen, they don't allow all software to come in either. That's not evil, but I wouldn't say they're guardian angels either.

As for your other post, I didn't say MIPS couldn't HANDLE OpenGL, I was asking if there were currently any platforms with an OpenGL compatible GPU. From what I know, most MIPS platforms are headless.

Please read before you start ranting, because you're pointlessly fighting me for things I'm not even saying or would ever say.


@crazycheeze
I know china's censorship isn't that bad, but it's considerably worse than most other places in the world. Bad enough to the point that they tried hacking google to change search results and ended up making their own search engine to replace google within their own country. and obviously there are parts of china that don't have restrictions. First of all, the country is huge. it's pretty hard to moderate over 2 billion people. Secondly, china doesn't even like to admit some people in the country are actual residents, I'm sure these people, if they can afford Internet access, are not using the main land's ISPs. Thirdly, Chinese people who can afford an ISP by themselves tend to be very intelligent people and can probably bypass firewalls.

As for open hardware platforms, I didn't say MIPS wasn't, I just said it doesn't have a big market in desktop or mobile PCs.

[ldesnogu]

Obviously some went into modifying QEMU to use the x86 emulation instructions in the microcode, and modifying existing open source drivers to work on the Loongson CPU, but your comment seems to suggest there is a lot more going on. EnQuiring minds want to know

As far as I know their version of QEMU isn't available. And for sure it isn't in QEMU mainline.

[bridgman]

Last time i checked loongson do have a 0.0000x% market share even if they spend 25times more than amd the impact is small ... What do you expect from a market participant with a market share of 0.0000x%?

What I expect is from you -- some substance to back up your statement. If there isn't a body of open source contributions today then why do you assume there will be "25-50x" as much spending (relative to revenues) in the future ?

ye I know hitting children is what big boys from amd+intels do because they can not fight against a real enemy.

Nice try, but you're the one making misleading statements not Loongson... or was "hitting children" referring to me disagreeing with you ?

[necro-lover]

What I expect is from you -- some substance to back up your statement. If there isn't a body of open source contributions today then why do you assume there will be "25-50x" as much spending (relative to revenues) in the future ?

Based on the sales and the investment money they do not only spend 25-50x more money on opensource its more than 1000times.... more but hey maybe the investment slows down in the future.
Maybe its only because they are "new" on the market.

Nice try, but you're the one making misleading statements not Loongson...

If i web-surf on there website then "Opensource(freesoftware) matters" is the headline do you need a screen shot? if i surf on the amd website only closed source microsoft shit pop up. Source: http://www.loongson.cn/dev/community/ and http://www.amd.com/de/Pages/AMDHomePage.aspx AMD only make advertising for Microsoft they give a shit about Linux (in there advertising).

or was "hitting children" referring to me disagreeing with you ?

Who knows in what league you play in? Hitting Childens freedom with DRM technique is what you are strong in right? Maybe related childrens can answer this "Blue-ray" questions?

You choose your own league! its your choice.