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First Fedora Image For the MIPS Available For Testing

Posted by timothy on from the beldar-conehead's-favorite-chip dept.

New submitter alexvoica writes: Today Fedora contributor Michal Toman has announced that the first Fedora 22 image for 32-bit MIPS CPUs is available for testing; this version of the operating system was developed using our Creator CI20 microcomputer, which includes a 1.2 GHz dual-core MIPS processor. In addition, Michal announced he is working on a 64-bit version designed to run on MIPS-based Cavium OCTEON III processors.

28 comments

  1. Linux everywhere. by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

    My first thought was, "oh holy crap, MIPS is still a thing?"

    Awesome to see non ARM, non Intel ISAs get some support from large Linux institutions.

    --
    Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    1. Re:Linux everywhere. by binarylarry · · Score: 1

      I hear they're going to port to the 6502 next!

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    2. Re:Linux everywhere. by alexvoica · · Score: 2

      About 800 million devices using a MIPS CPU shipped in the last 12 months.

    3. Re: Linux everywhere. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can I run this on my old DirecTv DVR HR-20?

    4. Re:Linux everywhere. by andreas.hummelbrunne · · Score: 1

      But only a tiny fraction of those are PCs. Most is Consumer-Hardware that's running a propietary system.

    5. Re:Linux everywhere. by alexvoica · · Score: 1

      Actually, a lot of them are Wi-Fi and networking chips that run Linux (mostly OpenWrt, Debian, etc.).

    6. Re:Linux everywhere. by CastrTroy · · Score: 1

      Yeah, people just don't know about them because they are embedded products. There's a lot of routers that use MIPS chips. Intel/AMD x86(64) and ARM are so well known because the chip is one of the bullet points on the marketing materials such as desktops, laptops, phones, and tablets. MIPS chips are put into devices where the processor isn't used as a marketing point. That's not to say it's a bad chip, just stating the way it is.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    7. Re: Linux everywhere. by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      How about the SGI SkyWriter?

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    8. Re: Linux everywhere. by Barny · · Score: 1

      Holy crap, I just looked those things up, they are glorious. And here I was going to make a joke about wanting to run it on an Indigo. You sir, are a true master of the craft.

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      ...
      /me sighs
    9. Re:Linux everywhere. by CaptainPinko · · Score: 1

      What are the advantages of MIPS over ARM? Seems like ARM would have a healthier ecosystem and more software vetted for it outside of maybe legacy stuff.

      --
      Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
    10. Re:Linux everywhere. by alexvoica · · Score: 5, Informative

      Great question (I get asked about this a lot). Here are a few points:

      (1) Hardware multi-threading support: MIPS offers SMT support for the latest Warrior CPUs; for a slight increase in area (~10%), you can scale up the number of hardware threads (1, 2, 4) and get a 40-50% boost in performance. ARM CPUs do not support SMT and can only scale in number of cores.
      (2) Better hardware virtualization support: MIPS Warrior CPUs support hardware virtualization at the low end (e.g. microcontrollers) as well as the high end (application processors). ARM CPUs support hardware virtualization only at the high end. Moreover, MIPS CPUs support multiple trusted execution environments (up to 7 in MCUs, up to 31 at the high end) while ARM CPUs have only one TEE.
      (3) Better raw DSP performance: MIPS Warrior CPUs offer superior DSP performance vs. equivalent ARM CPUs (e.g. up to 2.5x better DSP performance in MCUs)
      (4) Better performance efficiency: MIPS CPUs offer equivalent performance but at smaller area/power consumption over equivalent ARM cores (e.g. up to 30% area savings at the cluster level and 40% savings at the core level relative to similar performance competition)
      (5) More mature 64-bit ecosystem in networking and embedded: MIPS 64-bit CPUs have a rich history in high-performance enterprise networking (examples include Broadcom XLP and Cavium OCTEON processors); there is a whole ecosystem formed around OpenWrt on MIPS for example.

    11. Re: Linux everywhere. by CronoCloud · · Score: 2

      What about a PlayStation 2? Be nice to have a modern Linux on it.

      (And yes, I know the answer is no, since Sony had to do a custom distro for the wacky architecture. It's not plain MIPS, it's MIPSEEL)

    12. Re:Linux everywhere. by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

      Finally, a new OS for my Commodore 64. Goodbye, BASIC! Hello Linux command line in 8-bit block letters!

    13. Re:Linux everywhere. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      Is there anywhere that the 'Warrior' design actually exists in any form more advanced than internal or very-select-partners-only engineering samples?

      Based on what is written about them, they seem fairly interesting; but they don't actually seem to exist anywhere. You can get relatively low end MIPS cores in a lot of routers and such (ramips based devices and some broadcom) and much punchier hardware from outfits like Cavium; but the field is pretty empty of the 'warrior+powerVR' SoCs that are proposed in various slide decks. The CI20 is still based on the JZ4780, from Ingenic's 'if you really can't afford a fancy Allwinner' line of penal CPUs; but no warrior.

    14. Re:Linux everywhere. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Theoretical performance advantages mean very little next to availability and flexibility.. And the ability to easily re-use existing codebases.

      Notice how all PCs and servers now use evolved versions of x86? And not MIPS, SH3/4, Alpha, SPARC, PA-RISC, PPC, or Itanium? The computing world is littered with the corpses of "superior" architectures, including Intel's own replacement.

    15. Re:Linux everywhere. by alexvoica · · Score: 1

      There are a few publicly announced SoCs using MIPS Warrior CPUs: Baikal-T1 (networking), Altair FourGee-1150/1160 (4G modems) and Mobileye EyeQ4 (ADAS). More recent Cavium OCTEON III and Broadcom XLP II SoCs are also based on the same Release 5 architecture used to build the Warrior family. Regarding Creator, Ci20 was the first board we built using the silicon we had available at the time. But we plan to expand it to include more feature-rich members.

    16. Re:Linux everywhere. by alexvoica · · Score: 1

      We are not aiming for PCs and servers at the moment, our target markets are mobile and embedded devices (phones, tablets, wearables, IoT, networking, home entertainment, automotive, etc.). In that space, MIPS has an advantage and quite an important ecosystem built over the last decades. And MIPS shipments are growing; for example, this year we saw a 9% increase over the previous one.

    17. Re:Linux everywhere. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fedora is not a desktop only distro.

      smh

    18. Re:Linux everywhere. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      *tips fedora*

    19. Re:Linux everywhere. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How come that phones, tablets, wearables, and home entertainment boxes suddenly don't count as "personal computers" anymore?

    20. Re:Linux everywhere. by alexvoica · · Score: 1

      If your definition of PCs includes tablets, wearables and home entertainment boxes, then MIPS has a visible presence there too. MIPS enjoys a large market share in home entertainment for example; we're starting to make headway into mobile and wearables too. But for me PCs are desktop computers.

  2. Stick a fork in MIPS by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Are there any SBCs that don't cost twice as much as the equivalent ARM? And preferably, made by a company that knows that "minicomputer" already has a meaning?

    Seems like ARM got cheaper than MIPS a long time ago, and the only reason MIPS is still hanging on is inertia

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Stick a fork in MIPS by Jack+Greenbaum · · Score: 1

      Ever heard of a small company called MicroChip?

    2. Re:Stick a fork in MIPS by alexvoica · · Score: 1

      There are multiple SBCs you can buy that use MIPS; chipKITs using PIC32 MCUs from Microchip are one example but there are also tons of boards using Qualcomm Atheros or MediaTek Ralink silicon that run OpenWrt. A quick search on Linux Gizmos reveals at least half a dozen MIPS-based boards were launched just in the last year.

  3. Stop trying to make MIPS happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    MIPS is not going to happen.

    1. Re:Stop trying to make MIPS happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nearly 1 billion MIPS-based devices shipped last year.

      That is pretty happening.

  4. NetBSD everywhere. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How about NetBSD? I have a (very, very early) resurrected port to the PlayStation 2. Granted, it doesn't do much, but it proves it's doable. It's available over at https://github.com/boricj/src, instructions in the NetBSD playstation2 mailing list.

    And about the "not plain MIPS" : it's a wacky almost-MIPS 3, slightly-MIPS IV with a MIPS 32 cache/TLB, a 32 bit FPU and 128-bit multimedia extensions and registers, but it's still a almost-plain MIPS 3.

    1. Re:NetBSD everywhere. by alexvoica · · Score: 1

      Here is an entry from the NetBSD official blog on their progress for Creator Ci20 (the same board used for the Fedora port). It looks like there has been some good progress made already.