RE: New Linux PowerPC development

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Malek [mailto:dan@mvista.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 24, 2001 12:27 PM
To: Cindy Peters
Cc: 'linuxppc-embedded@lists.linuxppc.org'
Subject: Re: New Linux PowerPC development


Dan Malek wrote:

Cindy Peters wrote:

quoted

The MPC823, however, does not have an IDE or PCI interface for a hard

disk.

Sure it does.  Just use the PCMCIA.

quoted

We feel we would have to design an interface into an FPGA.

This is also a solution many people use.  Lots less expensive and
less complex than a PCI adapter.

We have just recently been instructed by management to stay with the MPC823
in order to re-use the previous software and hardware development as much as
possible. We are looking at using some VHDL IP provided by Open Cores (this
is very new) for the IDE interface. Are you familiar with this?

The VHDL code uses a processor independent interface called a wishbone
interface. I don't know much about it yet. I don't know if this is something
standard or just developed for Open Cores. Do you (or anyone else) know of
any driver software that may be available for this interface?

-- Dan

Also, I am trying to determine the approximate time it takes the 823 to
access memory (i.e. external EDO DRAM). Does anyone know?

I have downloaded the lmbench software to determine some benchmarking
information. I am not sure how to build it for the PPC. I have a cross
compiler development environment setup in a subdirectory. Can someone help
me with this?

Thanks.
Cindy


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On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Cindy Peters wrote:

I have downloaded the lmbench software to determine some benchmarking
information. I am not sure how to build it for the PPC. I have a cross
compiler development environment setup in a subdirectory. Can someone
help me with this?

MontaVista reportedly has this as part of their at-cost HHL kit. However,
I am not aware of any monetarily-free bundles of this cross-compiled for
various architectures.

It's been on my to-do list to work on this; however, my experience thus
far is that this is not entirely straightforward to cross-compile based on
what's in the package at present.

I'm trying to do some PCMCIA CompactFlash vs. discrete flash + JFFS2
benchmarking, so I'll let you know if I get anywhere with it.

Regards,

Grant


--
 Grant Erickson                       University of Minnesota Alumni
  o mail:erick205@umn.edu                                 1996 BSEE
  o http://www.umn.edu/~erick205                          1998 MSEE


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Grant Erickson wrote:

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Cindy Peters wrote:

quoted

I have downloaded the lmbench software to determine some benchmarking
information. I am not sure how to build it for the PPC. I have a cross
compiler development environment setup in a subdirectory. Can someone
help me with this?

MontaVista reportedly has this as part of their at-cost HHL kit. However,
I am not aware of any monetarily-free bundles of this cross-compiled for
various architectures.

Our tool-chain is publicly available on our ftp site for several architectures (including 8xx). ftp://ftp.mvista.com


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We were going to release it, but if you read the lmbench license you
will find out that contrary to popular belief it is not considered "free
software".  Basically if you use lmbench for commerical purposes, or
need to patch it to allow for it to cross compiler, or change it in
anyway, you are not allowed to do anything with it.

So the short answer is we said "screw it", decided not to ship it.  We
will give our patches and tools to (paying) customers on request, but it
just isn't worth our while to deal with these restrictions for the open
source release.  (Sorry..)

FYI, lmbench is actually pretty easy to cross compile.  If I remember
right just do:
make CC=(compiler)
make CC=(compiler) results
make CC=(compiler) rerun

--Mark Hatle
MontaVista Software, Inc.

Grant Erickson wrote:

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Cindy Peters wrote:

quoted

I have downloaded the lmbench software to determine some benchmarking
information. I am not sure how to build it for the PPC. I have a cross
compiler development environment setup in a subdirectory. Can someone
help me with this?

MontaVista reportedly has this as part of their at-cost HHL kit. However,
I am not aware of any monetarily-free bundles of this cross-compiled for
various architectures.

It's been on my to-do list to work on this; however, my experience thus
far is that this is not entirely straightforward to cross-compile based on
what's in the package at present.

** Sent via the linuxppc-embedded mail list. See http://lists.linuxppc.org/

Cindy Peters wrote:

 > We have just recently been instructed by management to stay with the
 >  MPC823 in order to re-use the previous software and hardware
 > development as much as possible. We are looking at using some VHDL
 > IP provided by Open Cores (this is very new) for the IDE interface.
 >  Are you familiar with this?
 >
 > The VHDL code uses a processor independent interface called a
 > wishbone interface. I don't know much about it yet. I don't know if
 >  this is something standard or just developed for Open Cores. Do
 > you (or anyone else) know of any driver software that may be
 > available for this interface?
 >

Having done several non-standard IDE interfaces before, I can say PIO
mode for the IDE OpenCore would be straight forward to implement. DMA is
always a bit more complicated.  I took a quick look thru the OpenCore
documentation.  It looks like the core would work on the 8xx bus with
few modifications.


 > I have downloaded the lmbench software to determine some benchmarking
information. I am not sure how to build it for the PPC. I have a cross
 > compiler development environment setup in a subdirectory. Can someone
help
 > me with this?

Sure, download our Journeyman product for 8xx, it includes
cross-compilers and 8xx userland.  ftp://ftp.mvista.com


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