Re: 64 bit powerpc

Actually you can do both BE and LE Linux on them, it's just that IBM is pushing development towards LE at the moment. I suppose it's a plan to make it easier for X86 developers to migrate over and/or encourage movement to POWER8+.

FreeBSD only supports BE on POWER.

POWER9 is slightly biased towards BE but has a toggle at the logical partition level for BE vs LE so it works well either way. There are only a few instructions that don't work in LE mode (load/store multiple, move-assist).

On Fri, Jul 6, 2018, at 12:25 PM, Peter J. Philipp wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 06, 2018 at 12:15:02PM -0500, Brandon Bergren wrote:
> > I'm also interested in 64 bit PPC, as I have a Talos II (dual POWER9) and have a second machine coming soon for driver debugging work (Talos II Lite "special developer system" -- https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TLSDS1/intro.html )
> > 
> > I'm currently spending time doing driver debugging on FreeBSD, but would prefer using OpenBSD. I don't have an actual background in driver/kernel development but I'm starting to learn.
> 
> I've had my eyes on such a system in the past (one can only dream).  As far as
> I can remember Linux is using it in Little Endian byte order, and I don't 
> know what FreeBSD is doing.  I think up to POWER8 or something you should only 
> go Big Endian byte order.  I'm sticking with Big Endian byte order for now as
> that's what's in powerpc arch.
> 
> I must say I learned a whole lot today working on this.  Hopefully I won't get
> confused.
> 
> Nice system you have!
> 
> -peter


-- 
  Brandon Bergren
  Technical Generalist