[erlang-questions] HiPE on MIPS/MIPS-64

[Kostis Sagonas]

Jim Thompson wrote:
> I'm interested in discussing what it would take to get MIPS/MIPS-64 
> support into HiPE.   HiPE already supports SPARC (32 & 64bit), PPC (32 & 
> 64 bit) and x86 (as well as x86-64).

Pretty correct.  However, HiPE does not have a PPC 64 bit port (we 
started one but we never got access to a machine, so the port never 
finished).

> I've read that the internal RLT for HiPE looks a lot like the MIPS 
> instruction set.

Again pretty correct.  However RLT --> RTL (Register Transfer Language).

> Is it just a matter of defining (or re-using) the ABI for the platform, 
> and then writing the 'glue' for plugging the binary, or is it much, much 
> more complex that that?

As far as we are concerned, it's mainly a matter of getting access to a 
machine and prioritizing this task.  Your plan seems correct though. 
Somebody has to encode the ABI in Erlang and then write the RTL -> MIPS 
translator.  Given access to a machine it should be a matter of about a 
month to do this port.

> Yes, this is with an Octeon chipset in-mind (16 cores, discussed on-list 
> last August), seems like an ideal 1U Erlang box to me.
> 
> Also, why no SPARC-on-Intel support for HiPE?

I do not know of any problem of our Solaris on Intel support.
It should be working.

> Jim

Kostis