FreeBSD on New Architectures

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."

Comments

Why?

[akharon]

I can understand the IA-64 port, as most of the x86 crowd will eventually be there, but why PPC and SPARC? Those are even more major changes, and makes a lot more work for drivers etc. Given that the SMP code in FBSD is nowhere near that of Solaris, it would make more sense to stick to the workgroup server sized market, with 4-8 CPU machines on x86 (what really needs 1 or 2 proc sun hardware that can't be accomplished on 1-2 way x86 or even 4-way x86?).

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that the SMP code in FBSD is nowhere near that of Solaris

Perhaps you missed the fact that this platforms are being added in 5.0-RELEASE,
a release who's primary intention is to turn FreeBSD into baby solaris with respect to multiple processors.

...and don't troll along about what FreeBSD should and should not be doing. See
this post for reasoning behind additional platforms. By the way, code speaks louder than slashtrash comments, if you think FreeBSD should be doing something that it isn't, perhaps you should be submitting patches.