This page contains information about porting FreeBSD to UltraSPARC - systems.
+This page contains information about the FreeBSD port to Sun Microsystem's + UltraSPARC architecture. UltraSPARC is a + + Tier 1 architecture, and as such is fully supported by the + FreeBSD project. However, the port + is not as mature as the existing i386 or alpha ports. Discussion of the + UltraSPARC port takes place on the + freebsd-sparc + mailing list.
-The follow people have been working either in the spotlights or behind + the scenes to get the FreeBSD port off the ground:
10 December, 2002 : Daily snapshots of 5.0-CURRENT are now + available on + + ftp2.freebsd.org. +
A summary of supported systems follows. SMP is supported on all supported + systems that contain more than 1 processor. For full details please see + the + + release notes of the + release you are using.
-The following systems are supported, but can only be netbooted due to + the onboard scsi controller being unsupported. Work is underway to add + support for this scsi controller.
The following systems are unsupported.
-Any system not listed here that does not have an UltraSPARC III or greater + processor is expected to work, but may not have been tested. If you have + a system that is not listed here please try it, and let + us know about it.
-4 October, 2002 : Impressive progress has - been made since the last update. A fully installable snapshot - is available from ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/development/sparc64. - Thanks to the relatively cheap hardware available from Sun, sparc64 - has become the most popular 64-bit platform for FreeBSD - 5.0-CURRENT. It is expected that FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE will fully - support sparc64.
10 March, 2002 : Perl works. Thanks to an in - depth bug report from Garrett Wollman we were able to identify a bug - in the fpu emulator which was causing problems bootstrapping - perl.
9 March, 2002 : SMP support has been added, - which is known to work on dual ultra 2 and ultra 60 workstations.
3 March, 2002 : A bootable ISO image is - now available for installing FreeBSD/sparc64 onto a supported - system. Please see the freebsd-sparc mailing list for more - information. The ISO image is available here.
26 February, 2002 : David O'Brien has - posted a working self-hosted sparc64 toolchain. You may - download the archive file - here. Untar it in /.
9 October, 2001 : Jake Burkholder and - Thomas Moestl have been porting FreeBSD to the UltraSparc for - the past few months and first booted a machine into single user - mode on the 18th of October. The log from the serial console can - be found here.
The FreeBSD/sparc64 platform port was initiated by Jason Evans in - 1997. Originally, the port was backed by Sun Microelectronics. Sun - Microelectronics (SME) is the part of Sun that makes - microprocessors. Up until now, SMCC (the part of Sun that makes - workstations) has been the overwhelmingly primary customer of SME. - SME naturally wants to expand its sales, and to do that, they need - to sell CPUs to people outside of Sun. FreeBSD was perceived as - being a way of accomplishing this.
- -To understand why Sun could fund a FreeBSD port, which would seem - to conflict with Sun's Solaris offerings, you need to realize that - Sun is broken up into separate business units that often - compete with each other. The Solaris people at - Sun may not like having a FreeBSD port to compete with, but their - power to prevent it is somewhat diminished due to the business - model. Of course, if the FreeBSD port were a major threat, SMI - (the main Sun umbrella company) would put a stop to it. However, - this is unlikely, since FreeBSD mostly meets the needs of a - different market sector than Solaris. Solaris does wonderful - things on big MP servers. FreeBSD is fast and lean for small - servers. It is also useful for certain types of embedded - applications, which is actually the main reason SME is interested - in seeing a port of FreeBSD to UltraSPARC.
- -A while back, SME approached the FreeBSD core team and offered - monetary compensation of some nature in exchange for an official - UltraSPARC port. The core team turned down this offer. The exact - reasons are known only to the core team, but Jordan Hubbard - implied that SME's offer was not of major interest since to be of - long term use to FreeBSD, such a proposal would need to include - support for a number of years from someone internal to Sun.
- -Jason Evans started working at SME in September of 1997. During - the first week, he caught wind of the negotiations SME was making - with the core team. Jason expressed extreme interest in working - on the project. Through a bit of persistence (and the failure of - the proposal made by SME), he was given permission to begin work - on the port.
- -Jason's other duties SME included finding information for - software vendors who are porting their OSes/RTOSes to the - UltraSPARC. This put him in a good position to gather hardware - information pertinent to the FreeBSD port.
- -Jason was instrumental in getting the FreeBSD/sparc64 port done, - and doing much of the initial planning. Sun Microsystems has - since backed out of their support for the FreeBSD/sparc64 effort, - and Jason Evans eventually left Sun.
- -Paolo Di Francesco was the next "father" of the port. Paolo - attempted, for the first time in the history of the port, to - organize information, developers, and tasks into a structure that - can only be known as project management. If not for the 98-99 - holiday season and a few outspoken individuals on the mailing list, - Paolo would have continued on. During his tenure, a number of - people stepped up to work on the older Sun SPARC architectures. - This did cause a slight chasm in the project, and many of the more - qualified individuals were on the side of the UltraSPARC family of - machines. Luckily, this didn't end up a period of quiet on the - mailing list, as Telecom Italia provided us with a list keep-alive. - A glitch in their system caused one of Paolo's posts to keep coming - back and back and back and back... This repeat post continued well - into 1999, when the list did once again become mostly silent.
- -In 2000, Jake Burkholder and Thomas Moestl have made an - incredible amount of work on the sparc port. Most of the - development has taken place in the Perforce repository on - freefall, and has only been merged to the HEAD (-CURRENT branch) - of CVS after more careful testing. David O'Brien has done a lot - of work to provide a usable toolchain for FreeBSD/sparc64 - development. Until one of the above mentioned people updates this - paragraph, please see the mailing list archives. ;)
- -It's right here. - The old FAQ is SME-centric, and sun4u-specific. These traits do - not reflect the current state of the port, since SME has pulled - their official support from the port and the majority of the - development equipment now consists of older Sun SPARC hardware. - Furthermore, there haven't been a lot of frequently asked questions - of late. Most of the items in the old FAQ date back to before the - mailing list was being archived.
- -It is possible to boot a number of newer UltraSparc hardware - platforms into FreeBSD with time and patience. Please see the FreeBSD/sparc64 - Hardware Notes for more information.
- -Please see the FreeBSD/sparc64 - Hardware Notes for more information.
- -See question #3.
- -It is reasonable to say that FreeBSD/sparc64 will provide some - Solaris/SunOS emulation. It is too early in the life of the port to - answer this any more specifically.
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