Thanks Steve, David
On 28 September 2013 03:04, David Kuehling <[email protected]> wrote: > > I've wondered if SMP Loongson systems are anywhere to be found: > > http://bbs.lemote.com/viewthread.php?tid=43118 > > There seem to be Loongson-3A motherboards available, according to: > > > https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/loongson-dev/loongson$20mini-itx/loongson-dev/twzd5TBz_1k/U6MXpHrEbKAJ > > 3A is available, in the laptops at least (there is one sat on my desk), but the rack mount or mini-PC would be far nicer options. I've started enquiring already after the reality of the 3A non-laptop solutions. Let me chase some internal avenues as well. > But I don't see Loongson 3A being an option until at the very least > > jessie kernels support it and are stable with all cores in use. This > > is just my opinion though and I can't speak for DSA. > > I don't see why the kernel being available with Debian should be > important WRT porterboxes. Stability: didn't know that the 3A have > stability problems. > > If this turns out to be an issue then we'll see if we can work on that... > > On mipsel at least, I recall that libreoffice, openjdk-7, webkit > > seemed to have some difficulty building. Each source package is built > > on a single machine only, and the current machines are limited to <= 1 > > GiB RAM I think so I expect heavy swapping takes place. > > I wonder whether it's <= or < 1 GB? Do the 1 GB machines really have > swapping problems? More than 2 GB userspace virtual memory per process > aren't (currently) possible on mips32 AFAIR. If some packages hit that > limit during compilation, we're doomed. > > That is an interesting observation... there are mips64 boxes with much more RAM available, and we should be able to build mips32 binaries on the mips64 systems - but, technically, I guess that is still a cross-compile :-/ > > [..] > > Maybe the existing boxes were not affected, but it was a concern about > > acquiring newer Loongson 2F hardware? > > Just a single data point: I'm running a Fuloong 6004 with 1GB RAM > (upgraded) and 750 GB disk (also upgraded) 24/7 and don't experience > more than about 1 deadlock/year. This system is quite busy although I > assume a build server will take much more load. The system currently > runs Debian Squeeze with a self-compiled kernel, though the kernel from > backports should perform comparably. > > I intend to get the 3A laptop (quad-core, 2Gbytes RAM I think) run up and checked out asap. It runs Debian by default, but I think it is running Squeeze and an oldish kernel - so we'll try wheezy and a kernel update and see how it goes for a start. cheers, > > David > -- > GnuPG public key: http://dvdkhlng.users.sourceforge.net/dk2.gpg > Fingerprint: B63B 6AF2 4EEB F033 46F7 7F1D 935E 6F08 E457 205F > > thanks guys. I'm drawing up a table of 32/64bit big/little endian larger/smaller-than-1Gbyte RAM systems so I can see the options we have. Oh, note, as well as Cavium, Broadcom and Loongson, Ingenic have their JZ47xx series that may also fit for 'small/cheap mipsel' boxes - one of my guys is building distro packages on a set of Android tablets right now. Not the solution for the big buildd and porter boxes, but another cheap available one to fling in the pot. Graham
