Ubuntu: A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture
We are well into Feature Freeze at this point, so an update is overdue. As of Feature Freeze in February, the status is that powerpc packages are no longer considered for proposed-migration, and we have discontinued all CD image builds for powerpc in zesty. For the moment, uploads continue to be built for powerpc in Launchpad, and packages are still published in the archive. You should expect both to be discontinued before the 17.04 release."
From: | Steve Langasek <steve.langasek-AT-ubuntu.com> | |
To: | ubuntu-devel-announce-AT-lists.ubuntu.com | |
Subject: | A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture | |
Date: | Thu, 16 Mar 2017 15:05:39 -0700 | |
Message-ID: | <20170316220539.2ik72zxn5u52mufw@virgil.dodds.net> |
Dear developers, Last year, I wrote[1] to let you know that the powerpc architecture would be dropped from zesty as of Feature Freeze. We are well into Feature Freeze at this point, so an update is overdue. As of Feature Freeze in February, the status is that powerpc packages are no longer considered for proposed-migration, and we have discontinued all CD image builds for powerpc in zesty. For the moment, uploads continue to be built for powerpc in Launchpad, and packages are still published in the archive. You should expect both to be discontinued before the 17.04 release. Thanks, -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org [1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2... -- ubuntu-devel-announce mailing list ubuntu-devel-announce@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-an...
Posted Mar 18, 2017 1:14 UTC (Sat)
by allesfresser (guest, #216)
[Link] (16 responses)
Posted Mar 18, 2017 1:59 UTC (Sat)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (12 responses)
Posted Mar 18, 2017 5:29 UTC (Sat)
by allesfresser (guest, #216)
[Link] (11 responses)
Posted Mar 18, 2017 5:42 UTC (Sat)
by allesfresser (guest, #216)
[Link] (10 responses)
Posted Mar 18, 2017 11:57 UTC (Sat)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (8 responses)
For a while I was supporting a series of boards built using IBM/AMCC PPC405ep SoCs. They sported dual onboard 100Mbps ethernet ports wired directly into the CPU's DMA matrix, and one or two miniPCI slots. Even at a languid 266MHz clock speed, the system could drive both ethernet interfaces at full-wire speed and still have more than enough oomph left over to max out at least one 802.11a/g device with the Linux bridging/routing/iptabling/etc everything.
Meanwhile, even the modern RPi3 is stuck sipping all of its I/O through a single USB2 interface that can't even max out a single 100Mbps ethernet device. (Yeah, I realize it also has SD/SDIO, but that performance is barely better than what a USB stick can achieve on the same system.)
Sure, it's hard to argue with the RPi's price and excellent support/etc, but I'm far from the only one who wished Broadcom had at least slapped a second (even crummy) USB interface (or improved the one's performance) on the later generations of the SoC instead of just replacing the CPU cores with something less anaemic.
(Next week I'm going to be doing some bus-level analysis of some communication failures involving the RPi and a certain family of printers. While I'm at it I may see why certain USB wifi devices also keel over under load too..)
Posted Mar 18, 2017 13:05 UTC (Sat)
by allesfresser (guest, #216)
[Link] (6 responses)
Posted Mar 18, 2017 18:47 UTC (Sat)
by jch (guest, #51929)
[Link] (5 responses)
If you want a kernel that's being actively maintained and a mostly free userspace (with the exception of some fairly exotic devel tools), the various BeagleBone variants are pretty nice — a single 100Gbit Ethernet phy on the base model, but directly attached to the SoC over GMII (the wireless models require a binary blob for the WiFi firmware). If you need gigabit Ethernet, Olimex are building some rather nice boards (e.g. the A20-Lime2). If you need more extensive networking but can manage without GPIOs, nothing can beat the mass-market routers that happen to be well supported by OpenWRT (the venerable WNDR3800 still being my favourite, but more recent models have vastly superior CPUs).
Posted Mar 18, 2017 22:54 UTC (Sat)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link]
Sure, anything major would have resulted in something that's no longer [mostly] pin-compatible, but would it have really been that hard to replace the BM2385's afterthought-of-a-USB controller with something a bit less horrid? (...Especially given that Broadcom already has other USB controllers that are much, much more capable...)
Posted Mar 20, 2017 21:03 UTC (Mon)
by moxfyre (guest, #13847)
[Link] (3 responses)
I have an OpenWRT device but it's ancient and I'm having trouble figuring out what to replace it with.
Posted Mar 22, 2017 1:18 UTC (Wed)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link] (2 responses)
But given it's 2017, you should probably be considering updating your benchmarks for Chacha20, which is more than fast enough by your criteria (`openssl speed chacha20-poly1305` reports 35MB/s on a 1st-gen Atom). It's been the default cipher in OpenSSH for two years and a large chunk of the web uses it too — you're likely using it more than AES at this point.
Posted Mar 23, 2017 13:38 UTC (Thu)
by mstone_ (subscriber, #66309)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Mar 24, 2017 0:15 UTC (Fri)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link]
Posted Mar 23, 2017 20:19 UTC (Thu)
by derobert (subscriber, #89569)
[Link]
Using iperf3, I tested my RPi3 to a PC on the LAN (the LAN and the PC are gigabit):
- Up or down, alone: 94.5mbps TCP / 95.8 (UDP)
That's really about as good as you can expect on a 100mbps Ethernet interface.
Posted Mar 18, 2017 13:29 UTC (Sat)
by ianmcc (subscriber, #88379)
[Link]
Posted Mar 18, 2017 22:25 UTC (Sat)
by glaubitz (subscriber, #96452)
[Link]
You will still be able to install and use Debian on that machine for the foreseeable future.
The powerpc ports has been removed from "testing" which means there is no official support and there are no CD images officially available. However, we are constantly improving support for the unofficial architectures in Debian (Debian Ports) and therefore powerpc is still receiving lots of love. You just have to use Debian unstable as Debian Ports doesn't have stable or testing releases.
We also support alpha, hppa, m68k, powerpcspe (PPC e500v2), sh4 (SuperH), sparc64 (SPARC), x32. On a sidenote, sparc64 is expected to become a release architecture after Stretch.
Posted Mar 20, 2017 16:33 UTC (Mon)
by anton (subscriber, #25547)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Mar 21, 2017 22:26 UTC (Tue)
by dvdeug (guest, #10998)
[Link]
Ubuntu: A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture
Ubuntu: A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture
Ubuntu: A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture
Ubuntu: A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture
Ubuntu: A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture
Ubuntu: A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture
Ubuntu: A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture
Ubuntu: A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture
OpenWRT device recommendation?
OpenWRT device recommendation?
OpenWRT device recommendation?
OpenWRT device recommendation?
Ubuntu: A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture
- Simultaneous (two iperf3s running, one with -R, two iperf3 servers running): 81.1/92 mbps (TCP) / 94.6/95.6 mbps (UDP)
Ubuntu: A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture
Ubuntu: A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture
Ubuntu: A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture
I suppose even the Raspberry Pi 3 now outpowers anything from that era
Some CPU results:
From a LaTeX benchmark:
0.76s Athlon 64 3200+, 2000MHz, 1MB L2, Fedora Core 1 (64-bit)
2.62s iBook G4 12", 1066MHz 7447A, 512KB L2, Debian Sarge GNU/Linux
5.46s Raspberry Pi 3, Cortex A53 1.2GHz Raspbian 8
And Gforth times:
sieve bubble matrix fib fft release; CPU; gcc
0.820 0.880 0.420 1.180 0.590 2017-03-20; Raspberry Pi 3 Cortex A53 1.2 GHz, gcc-4.9.2 (Raspbian 8)
0.620 0.728 0.340 1.000 0.532 2017-03-20; PPC 7447a 1066MHz; gcc 4.3.2
So no, at least on single-thread performance the RasPi3 does not even outpower a 2004-vintage iBook G4.
Ubuntu: A follow-up on 32-bit powerpc architecture