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FreeBSD on New Architectures

Posted by michael on from the daemon-power dept.

Kartoffel writes: "FreeBSD hackers have been hard at work getting the OS to run on PowerPC, IA64, and Sparc64 machines. These announcements are originally from FreeBSD.org. PowerPC: Benno Rice has committed a mega-patch which added support for OpenFirmware to the FreeBSD loader. The loader can now load a kernel over the network and execute it on an Apple iMac. IA64: After a few months of development Doug Rabson and Peter Wemm have committed patches which extends the FreeBSD/ia64 port's functionality and adds the possibility to boot on real hardware. Sparc64: Jake Burkholder and Thomas Moestl have been porting FreeBSD to the ultra sparc for the past few months and first booted a machine into single user mode on the 18th of October. The log from the serial console is available."

7 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT by Kartoffel · · Score: 4, Informative

    In addition to the porting work going on moving FreeBSD to other platforms, I'm really looking forward to new stuff in 5.0-CURRENT.

    FreeBSD 4.x doesn't do SMP terribly well, for instance. Version 5.0 brings SMPng, kernel scheduler entities, a preemptable kernel and possibly more. It's gonna be awesome.

    It's also particularly nice to see FreeBSD booting on Mac hardware. Sure, Apple's already got big chunks of FreeBSD 3.2 inside Darwin, but now we've got 5.0-CURRENT running on PPC, and the source is available. Imagine how sweet MacOS X could be if Apple MFC'ed from this new PPC FreeBSD work that's going on. Mmmmm...

  2. IA 64 boots to multi-user mode on real hardware by GrumpyOldMan · · Score: 4, Informative

    The first boot on real hardware to single
    user mode happened about 2 weeks ago. See
    http://docs.FreeBSD.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=3921+ 0+archive/2001/freebsd-ia64/20011007.freebsd-ia64

    The IA64 port is booting multi-user now, and has been for quite some time.

  3. UltraSparc != Sparc64 by shrike · · Score: 2, Informative

    Please note that Sparc64 is Fujitsu's 64-bit SPARC processor, which is not completely compatibel with Sun own 64-bit SPARC processor, called UltraSparc. They've been working on getting FreeBSD to work on the UltraSparc architecture, since the DEC^H^H^HCompaq road seems to be a dead end...

    1. Re:UltraSparc != Sparc64 by kl76 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Just to clarify, "sparc64" is what FreeBSD and NetBSD call the UltraSPARC architecture; "SPARC64" is Fujitsu's 64-bit SPARC v9 implementation. sparc64 != SPARC64.

    2. Re:UltraSparc != Sparc64 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Alpha death has nothing to do with the sparc64 port (yes, I'm calling it sparc64. sparc64 is a generic term implying "64 bit sparc", which is exactly what it is, not to mention that's what the extant NetBSD port calls it). The sparc64 port exists because Jake Burkholder decided he wanted to do it. Thomas Moestl

      It's not like FreeBSD-core formally decides "what we're porting to". Do the work, and if it's good, it gets added.

    3. Re:UltraSparc != Sparc64 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      I'm sorry, "Thomas Moestl" should have read "Thomas Moestl then jumped on board, and the two have been working at an alarming rate ever since".

  4. Re:*BSD is dying by duffbeer703 · · Score: 3, Informative

    As a user of FreeBSD in a large enterprise environment, I cannot agree with you less.

    Not only does FreeBSD power our enterprise servers and network archicecture, but it also runs many of our call center's agents pcs as well!

    --
    Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK