[LLVMdev] Arm port

[Samuel Crow]

Hello Chuck,

The Pandora is a tiny little handheld the size of a NintendoDS.  You might have trouble typing on the tiny little keypad unless you plug a full-size keyboard into it.  The 800x480 screen should be alright though and you might be able to use a TV adapter cable with the Pandora if you need to.  It should be able to run much of the same software as the Beagleboard as long as the screenmode is compatible.

If I had the money at the time preorders were taken on the first batch of Pandoras I might have ordered one.  I have trouble justifying it to myself when I have a fully-functional AMD-based dual-core Linux Laptop and hardly use it.  I'd like to support the Pandora in the software I'm writing though.

--Sam



----- Original Message ----
> From: Chuck Robey <chuckr at telenix.org>
> To: LLVM Developers Mailing List <llvmdev at cs.uiuc.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 6:53:47 PM
> Subject: Re: [LLVMdev] Arm port
> 
> Sandeep Patel wrote:
> > The Nokia N800 is an OMAP 2420 which is an ARM11.
> > 
> > If you want an OMAP 3530 today, I think the cheapest route is the Beagleboard.
> 
> Yeah, I see that now, about the N800.  About the BeagleBoard, if you're going
> after an equivalent # of peripherals (screen and keyboard are things I wanted)
> then, really, I think that the Pandora is cheapest.  I will say, without
> reservation, that the BeagleBoard is the goddamndest best single board computer
> that I've EVER seen, and I've put together a pretty large set of them, for one
> communications company or another.  It's just my opinion, but I think that
> covering that OMAP3530 is really important, cause you're covering a pretty darn
> big slice of homebrew enthusiasts, as opposed to people who'd let their
> computers end up as doorstops.
> 
> Besides, I've already bought the Pandora, it's kinda late to change my mind.  It
> hasn't arrived here yet, though, and I expect it to be another month or two
> before it finally does.  It's being produced by a set of open software guys, who
> are great at putting together a good list of peripherals, but they really don't
> seem to understand deadlines all that well.  I guess it won't kill me to wait a
> little.
> 
> What was actually important to me was getting a compiler to assist a FreeBSD
> porting effort, and I just hope that llvm becomes available for the Cortex-A8
> (or A9, as you said) soonest.  I'm reading the llvm docs now, and referring to
> my old college compiler books.  Unfortunately, I concentrated in OSes when I was
> in school.  I did get a piece of luck, and was able to pick up a copy of that
> great compiler book, cheaply, even (that guy didn't ever want to be reminded
> what compilers were!)
> 
> > 
> > deep
> > 
> > On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Chuck Robey wrote:
> >> Bob Wilson wrote:
> >>> On May 20, 2009, at 1:38 PM, Chuck Robey wrote:
> >>>> Hmm.  Well, my motivation is that I recently bought a Pandora (it
> >>>> has the
> >>>> Cortex-A8).  It's not going to arrive here for a couple more months,
> >>>> I think.
> >>>> When it does finally arrive, I want to be able to immediately begin
> >>>> work on
> >>>> replacing the Linux that comes pre-installed with FreeBSD-arm.
> >>> Hi Chuck,
> >>>
> >>> I'm not very familiar with the Pandora, but as far as I know ARM is
> >>> pretty good about backward compatibility.  You should be able to run
> >>> ARM code compiled by LLVM on it.  LLVM currently only generates code
> >>> for version 6 of the ARM architecture, so you wouldn't be taking full
> >>> advantage of the Pandora's processor but it may not matter, depending
> >>> on what you're trying to do with it.
> >>>
> >>> If you are able to try out LLVM for ARM, we would welcome your
> >>> feedback and contributions!
> >> Certainly, I'll test it out.  In fact, I think now, that I do have a Nokia 
> N800,
> >> and it runs the same TI OMAP3530 (I think, but I'm going to have to go
> >> doublecheck that) so I might well be able to test immediately.
> >>
> >> Tell you what: beginning immediately, I'll start reading all of the documents 
> I
> >> can find at your site, so I'm not quite so dumb at it.  I haven't seen that 
> the
> >> code was up for download (or checkout?) but if it is, I'll fetch it and begin
> >> looking things over.  If there is anything concrete that I could contribute,
> >> I'll do that.  But, just doing all that reading is going to take me some time
> >> (to really learn it all).  If you folks can offer me a compiler tool which I 
> can
> >> ultimately use for the porting of FreeBSD to the Pandora (or the N800?), then
> >> I'm going to really owe you something, I think.
> >>
> >> That means, I'll likely disappear now that I can start reading things.  I
> >> haven't gone away, I'm just trying to get to the point that I'm of use.