On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 08:38:04AM -0800, nathan binkert wrote: > Can you explain to us why exactly you want to run i386 instead of x86_64?
Certainly. The short answer is compatibility with the C compiler "LCC", which lacks an x86_64 backend. I want to compile programs using LCC and then run them using M5, so that I can experiment with various extensions to the compiler. I've chosen LCC in place of GCC or SUIF, etc., because it is smaller and simpler, and thus it is easier to work with. I only require a basic (but complete) C compiler that I can easily change; I don't care about optimisations or a specific ISA for my current work. LCC supports four ISAs: i386, Alpha, MIPS and SPARC. I know that Alpha and SPARC are well supported by M5, so I began work with the assumption that I would use the Alpha ISA. But I hit a setback yesterday, when I tried the Alpha backend and found that it required a non-GNU assembler in addition to a number of other changes in LCC. This made me suspect that only the i386 backend was working, or at least that I would need exotic software to use the other backends. However, today I have got the SPARC backend working, with some changes to replace "Solaris" with "Linux" settings. This is perfect for my requirements, as I now have a simulator (M5) and a compiler (LCC) that understand a common ISA. I hope this explains what's going on! Thankyou again for all your work on M5! -- Jack Whitham [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ m5-users mailing list [email protected] http://m5sim.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/m5-users
