UltraSPARC — sparcv9, sparc64
The 64-bit SPARC V9 architecture was introduced in 1993.
Some hardware that has it:
- Sun UltraSPARC I–IV series processors (1995–2005)
- Sun/Oracle SPARC T series (2005–)
- Fujitsu SPARC64 series (2004–)
Two flavors of package sets are offered:
- sparcv9 – pointers are 32 bits wide; programs can still make use of the
64-bit instructions (but gcc does not emit it, reported as #43350)
- sparc64 – pointers are 64 bits wide; 64-bit instructions are used
A sparcv9 userspace is commonly being employed on Linux;
similar to openSUSE_PPC. Whether the benchmark once done is still accurate for current models
has not been followed up on. Mixing of the two sets in an installed system is
explicitly supported, encouraged, and in some cases, even required.
- Only a 64-bit debugger (gdb, strace) can ptrace a 64-bit child.
- The choice of architecture of the gcc package also affects its default
mode. You can either install (gcc47.sparcv9 and gcc47-64bit.sparcv9) for having
“-m32” as default with additional -m64 capability, or (gcc47.sparc64 and
gcc47-32bit.sparc64) for “-m64” default and additional -m32 capability.
- The kernel package is exclusively sparc64.
- Zypper/libzypp does not properly deal with the sparcv9/sparc64 duality
currently.
openSUSE 12.2 is currently being prepared; the last full build
was openSUSE 11.3. See the build service output directory for any results. The
build service API/webui is not publicly available due to unresolved permission
settings with it.
Date: 2012-07-19