Re: [Qemu-devel] sparc64-softmmu Questions

[Nick Couchman]

>>> On 2009/10/21 at 13:06, Blue Swirl <address@hidden> wrote: 
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 7:41 PM, Nick Couchman <address@hidden> wrote:
>> I have a couple of questions regarding sparc64 softmmu support in Qemu:
>> - Is this part of Qemu being actively developed?  Judging by the commits to 
> the git repo, it doesn't look like there's a whole lot of focus on 
> development of this right now?
> 
> It's more active architecture than many others, but of course x86 is the 
> king.
> 
>> - Does anyone know what's left to be done for the sparc64 target to get it 
> to boot Solaris correctly?  Is there any sort of a bug repository for Qemu 
> that might list these things?  Or maybe someone has a list in their head?
> 
> There are several areas which need improvement. Sparc64 CPU emulation
> seems to be mostly OK. Sun4u devices are a bit bogus and sun4v devices
> do not exist yet. The Forth side of OpenBIOS is buggy, but we don't
> have enough Forth experts.
> 
>> - As has already been mentioned on this list, Sun has released the Open Boot 
> PROM code (at least the sun4v version of it) under the BSD and GPL licenses.  
> What would it take to get Qemu to use the OBP code instead of OpenBIOS?  
> Looks like the OBP output isn't really an executable, and it seems like 
> sparc64-softmmu will only load Sparc ELF binaries for the BIOS.
> 
> The hypervisor code below OBP is targeting Sun's Legion simulator, not
> ours or even native host.
> 
> For Solaris/Sparc64 emulation, there is more than one way:
> - sparc64-softmmu/sun4u + OpenBIOS (default stack): problems described above
> - sparc64-softmmu/sun4v + hypervisor + OBP: need to port the
> hypervisor to QEMU, maybe fix/implement a few devices
> - sparc64-solaris-user or sparc32plus-solaris-user (I sent a first cut
> patch to list some time ago): the licenses are incompatible and the
> user emulator would not be as useful as full system emulator.

Thanks for the updates.  I didn't realize that the OBP was written specifically 
for the emulator - I thought it was a standard PROM code.  Would there be any 
use in borrowing code from the OpenSPARC OBP source and porting that over to 
OpenBIOS?  Maybe that's just one of the things waiting on a Forth expert?  Or 
are their licensing issues there that would make such a task legally 
challenging?

For the devices, the sun4u platform is PCI-based, correct?  I assume, then, 
that peripheral devices, like network cards, video cards, etc., are shared from 
the rest of the Qemu code base?  What devices are lacking?

I'd also love to see a sparc64-solaris-user application - mainly, I'm 
interested in some sort of application that will let me run my legacy 
Solaris/SPARC application on Linux/x86(_64).  We were using a product called 
Transitive for that for a while, but IBM recently acquired Transitive and has 
decided to bury the technology in one of their products and not offer it as a 
stand-alone application anymore.  So, I'm looking for alternatives.  Do you 
still have those patches?  What's incompatible about the licensing?

Thanks,
Nick



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