# Build FreeBSD on Linux for Alternative architecture.



## DJs3000 (Dec 16, 2020)

Hello. There is a computer with a non-standard processor architecture with the linux operating system and the gcc compiler. I want to try porting FreeBSD to this computer. Is it possible to build FreeBSD source code on Linux?


----------



## a6h (Dec 16, 2020)

I don't understand the non-standard part! but check these links and mailing lists:


			BSDToolchain - FreeBSD Wiki
		



			FreeBSD Mailing lists: subscription for freebsd-hackers
		



			FreeBSD Mailing lists: subscription for freebsd-hardware
		

You probably better off checking NetBSD for your arch.


----------



## DJs3000 (Dec 16, 2020)

vigole, this is the Elbrus 8C processor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus-8S


----------



## DJs3000 (Dec 16, 2020)

I want to try porting FreeBSD to this platform.


----------



## a6h (Dec 16, 2020)

It's not impossible, but you're pretty much on your own. Elbrus is a Debian based distro, but it contains tools from MCST.
The main problem is the lack of documentation and proprietary nature of its ISA. But Elbrus was around for a many years and it has its own user base in Russia.
For start you should get in contact with developers familiär with Elbrus distro and MCST based products, e.g. Elbrus-8S, and probably SPARC architecture, willing to work on FreeBSD.


----------



## DJs3000 (Dec 16, 2020)

vigole, i have both the documentation and elbrus 8c itself. I need to understand, can I build FreeBSD on Linux or not? The native OS is a Debian-like system with its own compiler, which masquerades as GCC 7.5.


----------



## shkhln (Dec 16, 2020)

vigole said:


> Elbrus-8S, and probably SPARC architecture, willing to work on FreeBSD.


It's not SPARC, it's a custom VLIW architecture.


----------



## DJs3000 (Dec 16, 2020)

architecture name "e2k"


----------



## shkhln (Dec 16, 2020)

DJs3000 said:


> I need to understand, can I build FreeBSD on Linux or not?


It's technically possible, whether you can do this I can't really tell. (Or, rather, that would be impolite.)


----------



## PMc (Dec 16, 2020)

FreeBSD build depends on running FreeBSD. But, FreeBSD build can produce cross-compiles.

So, the first decision here is which approach would be more feasible: A) create a proper build environment in the linux installation to produce a FreeBSD OS in native code, or B) use a native FreeBSD on some other machine and teach it how to cross-compile for the Elbrus.
Besides that, there is a bunch of machine dependent code in the kernel, which certainly has to be refactored.


----------



## a6h (Dec 16, 2020)

shkhln said:


> It's not SPARC, it's a custom VLIW architecture.


Where did I suggest it's SPARC?


----------



## shkhln (Dec 16, 2020)

vigole said:


> Where did I suggest it's SPARC?


In the quoted sentence?


----------



## a6h (Dec 16, 2020)

vigole said:


> , and probably SPARC architecture


"probably" : because "Elbrus VLIW" is probably a SPARC-based design. Anyway I don't want to argue on that one.


----------



## DJs3000 (Dec 16, 2020)

PMc, e2k compiler exists in 2 versions. 1) The compiler runs on Elbrus OS (Debian like). 2) Cross compiler for Linux x86. Is it possible to work in this situation? theoretically, i can start a cross-compiler in freebsd under linux emulation. How to compile the kernel and the world of freebsd i know very well, i have been working with freebsd for many years.


----------



## shkhln (Dec 16, 2020)

vigole said:


> "probably" : because "Elbrus VLIW" is probably a SPARC-based design.


It's not derived from SPARC, it's much closer to Itanium (not directly based on this one either, just closer).


----------



## DJs3000 (Dec 16, 2020)

MCST makes processors of the original VLIW architecture and makes processors of the SPARC architecture. In the 90s, MCST designed processors for SUN.


----------



## Jose (Dec 16, 2020)

If the Wikipedia page is correct, and I'm understanding it correctly, that sucker uses _512-bit_ instructions!

Contrast with Itanic's puny 128-bit instructions.


----------



## SirDice (Dec 16, 2020)

> The Elbrus-8S and -SV processors support binary compatibility with Intel x86 and x86-64 processors via runtime binary translation.[2]


Sounds like there's really no need to "port" anything since it can run x86 and x86-64 code.


----------



## DJs3000 (Dec 16, 2020)

The x86 translator uses 2 cores and the system is left with 6 cores. This mode works but the performance is much lower than the native mode of operation.


----------



## SirDice (Dec 16, 2020)

DJs3000 said:


> The x86 translator uses 2 cores and the system is left with 6 cores. This mode works but the performance is much lower than the native mode of operation.


Sure, but it's a start. Getting it to run on its native ISA is going to be a lot more work and it would probably be beneficial to have at least _something_ running on it.

Performance is the last thing on your list of things to do. Your first priority is getting a kernel compiled to its native ISA and getting that kernel working enough to boot (single user mode).

Edit: I'm sure you've found this already but this looks like it has a lot of useful information: http://0x1.tv/Free_software_porting_on_the_Elbrus_architecture_(Андрей_Савченко,_LVEE-2019)


----------



## a6h (Dec 16, 2020)

I like to know beside Elbrus, is there any working Linux distro for Elbrus 8C? or people stuck with Elbrus! I'm just evaluating possibilities.


----------



## DJs3000 (Dec 16, 2020)

SirDice, i myself am engaged in simple porting of software. There are people who can help with the adoption of the code. how can i start building the freebsd kernel in a linux environment?


----------



## SirDice (Dec 16, 2020)

DJs3000 said:


> how can i start building the freebsd kernel in a linux environment?


Don't know, never tried it.


----------



## T-Daemon (Dec 16, 2020)

DJs3000 said:


> how can i start building the freebsd kernel in a linux environment?


Try the instructions from the link shkhln gave in #9:



			BuildingOnNonFreeBSD - FreeBSD Wiki


----------



## DJs3000 (Dec 16, 2020)

vigole
Elbrus OS
Alt Linux
Astra linux
Rosa Linux
Lotos
ЗОСРВ «Нейтрино-Э»
Циркон ОС
QP OS
Red OS (porting process)


----------



## ralphbsz (Dec 16, 2020)

Traditionally, all compiling of FreeBSD has been done on FreeBSD; for new architectures, that's done with a cross-compile. So in that traditional world, the first things needs to be to set up the compiler so it can output the desired instruction set. Today, FreeBSD uses the CLANG compiler on non-obsolete platforms, so you'll have to set that up. See the comments in "man arch" about compilers.

Only recently has it become possible to cross-compile FreeBSD from Linux. And if you look at that project, it still has open issues. One of the prerequisites is recent version of the CLANG compiler. So you will have to set up CLANG to generate code for you architecture either way.

So I can see at least the following necessary steps:
1. Add support for your architecture to CLANG.
2. Modify the kernel itself for architecture-specifics (paging, protection, memory model, ...)
3. Port whatever device drivers you need.
4. Work out the booting mechanism.

Compared to all these steps, trying to do the initial compile on Linux versus FreeBSD is a minor change. I would probably set up a FreeBSD cluster first (using whatever supported hardware you have available, typically Intel or AMD), and use that as a cross-compiling host. It's just easier this way, then you are doing things the traditional and well-tested way.


----------



## DJs3000 (Dec 17, 2020)

ralphbsz, llvm and clang are currently not working. There is only a completely custom compiler, which is presented to the system as GCC. I believe that there is no point in trying without clang.


----------



## Minbari (Dec 17, 2020)

Is this architecture endorsed by KGB FSB? Otherwise is not worth the effort to port FreeBSD on it.


----------



## DJs3000 (Dec 17, 2020)

Minbari said:


> Is this architecture endorsed by KGB FSB? Otherwise is not worth the effort to port FreeBSD on it.


That's all right))))))


----------



## ralphbsz (Dec 17, 2020)

DJs3000 said:


> ralphbsz, llvm and clang are currently not working. There is only a completely custom compiler, which is presented to the system as GCC. I believe that there is no point in trying without clang.


A compiler that works really well is pretty much the most important thing for supporting hardware. And with VLIW, having compilers that generate efficient code is exceedingly hard. Look at the history of the Itanium, and its predecessors (the Multiflow and Hewlett-Packard VLIW efforts, booth led by Josh Fisher). So if you have a GCC that works within the Linux ecosystem, that pretty much tells you what OS to run on the machine.

The other thing is this: As far as I can see, these VLIW chips are mostly used in supercomputers (of local russian manufacture and use). For a supercomputer, the OS itself is not all that important; the throughput and efficiency are. Those are in turn determined by the details of the compiler, and of communication libraries (where I include IO and storage as special cases of communication). Putting effort into changing the OS doesn't seem to be a good investment, compared to other things that could be optimized.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Dec 18, 2020)

Minbari said:


> Is this architecture endorsed by KGB FSB? Otherwise is not worth the effort to port FreeBSD on it.





ralphbsz said:


> The other thing is this: As far as I can see, these VLIW chips are mostly used in supercomputers (of local russian manufacture and use).



IDK a lot of about the Elbrus but as far I know that is used/intended to "everything", from space/defense (weapons systems etc. I think the S-400 for instance use those processors) to public offices (hence the x86 compatibility), but apparently that is also quite used by large companies looking for maximum possible security.

*[EDIT]* I suppose they can also be found in the upcoming Irkut МС-21 (transliteration: MS-21), or if not they are likely to appear now since the Western and Japanese vendors of some microelectronics just popup (as soon they learned the PD-14 engine is ready) to tell they will not delivery anything anymore, including the existing contracts and the import substitution program entered in place.

The only more thing I am aware, but this is formation may be imprecise, is the team who designed the early Elbrus later were contracted by Intel to design the "Pentium III" and possibly (I don't remember the details) were also involved with IA-64/Itanium design. I remember some guy on the internet (who supposedly had worked at MCST) commenting that at that time Intel managed to hire the processor designers but failed to convince the compiler guys to join...


----------



## ralphbsz (Dec 18, 2020)

I had no idea that Russia had its own homegrown microprocessor CPU line with its own instruction set. I knew about the east German "Robotron" machines, but they used only western microprocessors (mostly Zilog and Intel copies). The eastern IBM mainframe and VAX clones were famous, but they used western computer architecture. And then of all things, cloning VLIW ... which (in retrospect) was, to say it politely, a dead end in CPU architecture.



rigoletto@ said:


> I remember some guy on the internet (who supposedly had worked at MCST) commenting that at that time Intel managed to hire the processor designers but failed to convince the compiler guys to join...


On a VLIW design, forgetting the compiler guys ... that's just insane. But Intel tends to be insane. I was peripherally observing the Hewlett-Packard/Intel VLIW - Itanium operation (I worked in the same building as many of them), and even back then it seemed like ... a bad idea.


----------



## Jose (Dec 18, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> ...And then of all things, cloning VLIW ... which (in retrospect) was, to say it politely, a dead end in CPU architecture.


Maybe the Russians can make it work? Not that I would know. Still glad they're trying, though.


----------



## SleepWalker (Dec 18, 2020)

More realistic is the idea of porting FreeBSD to another Russian processor with a standard architecture.
It is called Baikal-M BE-M1000

*BE-M1000* is a feature-rich system-on-a-chip with eight ARM Cortex-A57 cores,
an 8-core Mali-T628 GPU, and a set of high-speed interfaces including HDMI,
PCI Express, 10Gb Ethernet and SATA. This SoC can be used in desktops,
microservers, and embedded applications.

It seems to me quite a doable task .
Moreover, there is information that FreeBSD is already running on this processor

I am looking for those who have this equipment for testing


----------



## rigoletto@ (Dec 18, 2020)

SleepWalker  you are likely to have more chances on IRC and mailing lists.


----------



## PMc (Dec 18, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> I was peripherally observing the Hewlett-Packard/Intel VLIW - Itanium operation (I worked in the same building as many of them), and even back then it seemed like ... a bad idea.



It is a bad idea. It does away with out of order execution, register renaming, speculative execution and branch prediction - so you loose the entire spectre support.


----------



## Jose (Dec 18, 2020)

PMc said:


> It is a bad idea. It does away with out of order execution, register renaming, speculative execution and branch prediction - so you loose the entire spectre support.


Do I detect sarcasm?


----------



## PMc (Dec 18, 2020)

Well, I'm a helpful guy, you know... so, if people really insinst to run their head against a wall, I might be willing to give them a push to become faster.

Here, I was mostly just quoting Boris Babayan, who, in 2001(!), wrote:


> E2K architecture advantages
> Besides the high speed this approach has many out
> standing advantages.
> 1. Simplicity.
> ...



Now if these terms don't ring a bell today, I don't know.

But what had happened: In 2004 Intel bought this guy and apparently his whole team of 600 people - only to stop this from going further?


----------



## arrowd (Dec 22, 2020)

DJs3000, can you please contact me on arrowd@freebsd.org ?

SleepWalker, what you basically need is just 40k rubles to buy this: https://www.chipdip.ru/product/bfk3.1
Maybe we can arrange a crowdfunding, I'll hapilly donate.


----------



## arrowd (Dec 22, 2020)

Oops, disregard my note on Baikal - it turns out that the developer board I mentioned has BE-T1000, which is not ARM, but MIPS.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Dec 22, 2020)

SleepWalker PR 251781


----------



## DJs3000 (Dec 24, 2020)

My YouTube chanel is about Elbrus - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4zlCBy0eFLkE-BxgqQK8FA


----------



## mercurius (Jan 9, 2021)

Wow. Just WOW.
I am very interested to see Elbrus (maybe try something via ssh). I am Russian too, I was born in the USSR but now I don't live in Russia.
Unfortunately, I don't have enough time now to read the thread thoroughly but I will be interested to help in porting FreeBSD when I have time.

I didn't know Elbrus isn't SPARC. Just FYI: I have two SUN machines and now running FreeBSD on one of them. But there is a SPARC64 port.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Jan 10, 2021)

mercurius said:


> Wow. Just WOW.
> I am very interested to see Elbrus (maybe try something via ssh). I am Russian too, I was born in the USSR but now I don't live in Russia.
> Unfortunately, I don't have enough time now to read the thread thoroughly but I will be interested to help in porting FreeBSD when I have time.
> 
> I didn't know Elbrus isn't SPARC. Just FYI: I have two SUN machines and now running FreeBSD on one of them. But there is a SPARC64 port.


AFIW just the _Elbrus-90micro_ use SPARC instructions.


----------



## DJs3000 (Jan 10, 2021)

rigoletto@ said:


> AFIW just the _Elbrus-90micro_ use SPARC instructions.


There is an Elbrus Sparc architecture and an Elbrus WLIV (e2k) architecture. We are talking about our own WLIV architecture.


----------



## DJs3000 (Jan 10, 2021)

mercurius said:


> Wow. Just WOW.
> I am very interested to see Elbrus (maybe try something via ssh). I am Russian too, I was born in the USSR but now I don't live in Russia.
> Unfortunately, I don't have enough time now to read the thread thoroughly but I will be interested to help in porting FreeBSD when I have time.
> 
> I didn't know Elbrus isn't SPARC. Just FYI: I have two SUN machines and now running FreeBSD on one of them. But there is a SPARC64 port.


Write me an email djs500@mail.ru In Russian, I will tell you about the plans. When I can get the cross-compiler, we can start working. I think there will be a lot of work.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Feb 21, 2021)

Some news (in english).









						About the Russian Elbrus Processor
					






					www.stalkerzone.org


----------



## arrowd (Sep 8, 2021)

In case anyone's interested, I got my hands on Elbrus QEmu emulator and managed to execute a simple assembly-written Hello World executable on qemu-bsd-user. This is not much, but at least some movement in this direction.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Oct 21, 2021)

Second-generation Baikal Electronics BE-M1000 CPUs Begins Shipping From Chip Fab Giant TSMC
					

Baikal Electronics officially received the first of several new batches of their BE-M1000 CPUs from semiconductor foundry TSMC.




					wccftech.com


----------



## eurohick2 (Jan 19, 2022)

Neither Linux OS (nor linux kernel build scripts these days) nor FreeBSD are suitable tools for Cross Compiling.  If they were then doing certain cross compiles "would be an option" yet there is no option.

I'm not allowed to discuss it (Sir Dice?  or who? would IP block me).  But I've tried cross-compile linux - it's ability is destroyed for "typical hobbyists" (i'm not allowed to say how) and similar new management has put "CLANG" as the only compiler in FreeBSD which itself admits "it has no way to compile itself without the system it was compiled upon running it - and there again it can only compile the same version" (without massive difficulties) - which i've also tried.  (more than one BIG TECH company is involved and at least one of makes cross compilers "that work with one click, and must be bought" - hopefully i've not said too much to swallow)

My advice is don't.  By the time you finish BIG TECH will have made everything altered and irrelevant as it does in (let's say a planned manner).


----------



## rigoletto@ (Jan 20, 2022)

*CPU Elbrus – the Russian Intel and our last hope...*




_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ojbRZnJkJo_


----------



## zirias@ (Jan 20, 2022)

eurohick2 said:


> Neither Linux OS (nor linux kernel build scripts these days) nor FreeBSD are suitable tools for Cross Compiling.  If they were then doing certain cross compiles "would be an option" yet there is no option.
> 
> I'm not allowed to discuss it (Sir Dice?  or who? would IP block me).  But I've tried cross-compile linux - it's ability is destroyed for "typical hobbyists" (i'm not allowed to say how) and similar new management has put "CLANG" as the only compiler in FreeBSD which itself admits "it has no way to compile itself without the system it was compiled upon running it - and there again it can only compile the same version" (without massive difficulties) - which i've also tried.  (more than one BIG TECH company is involved and at least one of makes cross compilers "that work with one click, and must be bought" - hopefully i've not said too much to swallow)
> 
> My advice is don't.  By the time you finish BIG TECH will have made everything altered and irrelevant as it does in (let's say a planned manner).


Seriously gotta try that substance some day 

Ok, really seriously: Cross compiling is always the way to get something for a new hardware architecture running in the first place. Of course, both GCC and LLVM can cross-compile perfectly fine. I'm cross-compiling FreeBSD for i386 and armv7 on a FreeBSD/amd64 host using LLVM, and userspace applications for Windows and Linux on a FreeBSD host using GCC...


----------



## SirDice (Jan 20, 2022)

eurohick2 said:


> I'm not allowed to discuss it (Sir Dice? or who? would IP block me).


Hi Debguy, bye Debguy.


----------



## astyle (Jan 20, 2022)

arrowd said:


> DJs3000, can you please contact me on arrowd@freebsd.org ?
> 
> SleepWalker, what you basically need is just 40k rubles to buy this: https://www.chipdip.ru/product/bfk3.1
> Maybe we can arrange a crowdfunding, I'll hapilly donate.


About $521.52 USD or  459.71 euro...  Right on par with some of the cheaper Threadripper boards.
--
eurohick2 : This project is most likely aimed at the Russian market, rather than the global one. TSMC is probably only too happy to have a customer or two for some of its under-utilized fab capacity.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Jan 20, 2022)

astyle said:


> About $521.52 USD or  459.71 euro...  Right on par with some of the cheaper Threadripper boards.
> --
> eurohick2 : This project is most likely aimed at the Russian market, rather than the global one. TSMC is probably only too happy to have a customer or two for some of its under-utilized fab capacity.


Aparently, Baikal BE-T1000 is 28nm and IIRC Russia have a 28nm fab. *[EDIT]* But yeah, it seems they are working with TSMC.

*Correction,* based on early 2021 information the 28nm fab is being deployed yet.


----------



## covacat (Jan 20, 2022)

rigoletto@ said:


> Aparently, Baikal BE-T1000 is 28nm and IIRC Russia have a 28nm fab. *[EDIT]* But yeah, it seems they are working with TSMC.
> 
> *Correction,* based on early 2021 information the 28nm fab is being deployed yet.


at least they have a cool 404 page


----------



## rigoletto@ (Jan 24, 2022)

There is a Baikal M laptop in the making:





						BITBLAZE Titan - BITBLAZE
					






					bitblaze.ru
				



(not sure if that is a render of nice aluminum/metal case or a crap plastic one)

and an Elbrus too:





						✔️ The first civilian laptop on the Russian Elbrus-2S3 processor | RuCore.NET - English Version
					

The first civilian laptop on the Russian Elbrus-2S3 processor ➤ It may seem to some that developing your own laptop is a clueless affair. I drew the case, put what I found in China inside, and that's it. However, in




					rucore.net
				




*Lets hope they will not f!ck with the industrial design part.*


----------



## rigoletto@ (Mar 22, 2022)

Development of domestic photolithographs is underway in Zelenograd (Russian)


----------



## astyle (Mar 22, 2022)

Kinda reminds me of Koukaku Kidoutai Arise: Alternative Architecture.  I acknowledge that there's not that many parallels between the anime and the technical process of photolithography  development beyond the names. But, being forced to basically re-invent chipmaking from ground up since 1980s has to be pretty frustrating even for the bright minds that are at top of the academic field domestically. Small wonder the current situation lags 15 years behind the rest of the planet. Here's a comment from that article:









						Разработка отечественных фотолитографов идет в Зеленограде
					

Новая народная фишка-считать что вообще все товары и технологии должны существовать и производиться в России, причём на лучшем в мире уровне, раздражает нереально.Люди, которые за три года не научились маску носить, сидят по кухням и стонут как...




					sdelanounas.ru
				



Translation:


> Hot new popular idea that products and technologies have to [exist *and* be made] in Russia, especially on par with the rest of the world, that's irritating to no end.
> 
> This is the same crowd that never learned to mask up after 3 years, sitting around the kitchen table and complaining how the country has shortchanged them. Hella unique people.



Don't bash me over the English translation. You have to know both languages to understand the translation correctly, and realize that snarky attitude in the comment is normal and is part of the translation.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Mar 22, 2022)

I know exactly what you are talking about but I also understand the reasons of side of the crowd too.


----------



## shkhln (Apr 26, 2022)

What, there are posts after 23.02.22 there? It's dead in the water, guys.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Apr 26, 2022)

shkhln said:


> What, there are posts after 23.02.22 there? It's dead in the water, guys.



IDK what you are asking about exactly, but if this is about the progress of microelectronic industry there were several news about several correlated points/topics but nothing solid or a complete plan is public known, as far I'm aware. In short, it seems the whole plan is being re-organized and some parts of the production process are being given priority. Example.

Apparently, a few days ago Malaysia offered to join the effort somehow.

You can follow related news in a centralized way in here.


----------



## shkhln (Apr 26, 2022)

You found a dedicated English-language vatnik forum? Impressive. Not in a good way, mind you.

You see, Elbrus is not really intended to be used in the military or industrial hardware, it's designed as a server/workstation processor. It wasn't really competitive at all in that niche at the TSMC 28 nm process and it certainly won't fare better if MCST backports it to some domestic 65+ nm process. This would probably give us an equivalent of Raspberry Pi Zero performance. Might as well just buy those from China.


----------



## astyle (Apr 26, 2022)

shkhln said:


> You found a dedicated English-language vatnik forum? Impressive. Not in a good way, mind you.
> 
> You see, Elbrus is not really intended to be used in the military or industrial hardware, it's designed as a server/workstation processor. It wasn't really competitive at all in that niche at the TSCM 28 nm process and it certainly won't fare better if MCST backports it to some domestic 65+ nm process. This would probably give us an equivalent of Raspberry Pi Zero performance. Might as well just buy those from China.



Even a Pi can run Mathematica. If you have the brains to use Mathematica, that is.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Apr 26, 2022)

shkhln said:


> You found a dedicated English-language vatnik forum? Impressive. Not in a good way, mind you.
> 
> You see, Elbrus is not really intended to be used in the military or industrial hardware, it's designed as a server/workstation processor. It wasn't really competitive at all in that niche at the TSCM 28 nm process and it certainly won't fare better if MCST backports it to some domestic 65+ nm process. This would probably give us an equivalent of Raspberry Pi Zero performance. Might as well just buy those from China.


Elbrus processors are used in military hardware (including radars) and weapon systems since years[1], there is no need to use the latest processor in those appliances. Not ever 45nm is generally necessary but 90nm is more than enough. IIRC Elbrus-2SM is the most used one in the latest systems.


----------



## astyle (Apr 26, 2022)

I'm not a fan of military applications, but even Uncle Sam relies on COBOL and IBM mainframes to run the COBOL programs. A lot of times, the reason for not upgrading is because the old fart in charge of EVERYTHING has a lot of distrust in  "Dem newfangled things", and will not be swayed, even with concrete evidence that flies in the face of that behavior. And then other old farts are pulled out of retirement so that they can tell you how to run rusty 50-year-old equipment. Those consultants are probably half blind, and unable to remember what they had for breakfast, but they will be able to recall instruction manuals from 50 years ago.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Apr 26, 2022)

astyle said:


> I'm not a fan of military applications, but even Uncle Sam relies on COBOL and IBM mainframes to run the COBOL programs. A lot of times, the reason for not upgrading is because the old fart in charge of EVERYTHING has a lot of distrust in  "Dem newfangled things", and will not be swayed, even with concrete evidence that flies in the face of that behavior. And then other old farts are pulled out of retirement so that they can tell you how to run rusty 50-year-old equipment. Those consultants are probably half blind, and unable to remember what they had for breakfast, but they will be able to recall instruction manuals from 50 years ago.



You don't need a lot of power to run Target Acquisition or EW systems, the ultra-heavy optimized algorithms are the real thing behind them.

Space technologies may benefit from smaller and lighter hardware but at the same time those are harder to shield, but ever 50 Kg saved make a difference in these applications.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Apr 27, 2022)

A bit off-topic but finally a phone with a switch to physically disable microphone and cameras.









						Смартфон AYYA T1
					






					ayya.tech


----------



## Jose (Apr 27, 2022)

Pinephones and Purism phones have had these hardware switches for a while now.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Apr 27, 2022)

Never heard of Pinephones and the Purism I was just aware of the laptops.

Thank you for pointing out.


----------



## tingo (Apr 30, 2022)

astyle said:


> I'm not a fan of military applications, but even Uncle Sam relies on COBOL and IBM mainframes to run the COBOL programs. A lot of times, the reason for not upgrading is because the old fart in charge of EVERYTHING has a lot of distrust in  "Dem newfangled things", and will not be swayed, even with concrete evidence that flies in the face of that behavior. And then other old farts are pulled out of retirement so that they can tell you how to run rusty 50-year-old equipment. Those consultants are probably half blind, and unable to remember what they had for breakfast, but they will be able to recall instruction manuals from 50 years ago.


Also, the process for getting new components (say for example, a new processor and platform) certified for use is both time-consuming and very expensive. So often it is cheaper to just go with the existing solution for as long as you can, even if it gets more expensive as time goes on.

Then you just swallow the economic "big bang" when the technical debt and scarcity of components catches up with you.

Not speaking for any government or military.


----------



## rigoletto@ (May 3, 2022)

Btw, by the end of 2023 China will have finished a 100% Chinese 14nm fab. That means fully immune to sanctions, and in fact Russia could probably acquire one and have a fully functional 14nm fab ever before they finish deploying/developing their own 28nm fab - _if they prefer to do that instead of just having their processor made in there_.


----------



## astyle (May 3, 2022)

I don't like how politics seems to find a way to stick its nose into economy and technology and hinder cooperation WAY on the other side of the damn planet. Ego and violence are making way too much noise. Politics demand transparency from economy and technology, but the other way doesn't seem to work. Pretty hypocritical, but this is the reality we're facing while trying to cooperate with each other.


----------



## rigoletto@ (May 5, 2022)

*Factory for the laboratory research line of the 28 nm process technology in Zelenograd*








						Фабрика для лабораторно-исследовательской линии техпроцесса 28 нм в Зеленограде
					

В конце прошлого 2021-го года в Зеленограде началось строительство корпуса общей площадью 50 000 м² для размещения 28-нанометровой лабораторно-исследовательской линии с участком иммерсионной фотолитографии нидерландской компании ASML, аналогичной уже используемой в международном...




					zen.yandex.ru


----------



## rigoletto@ (May 5, 2022)

*Plans for the production of Russian processors are shifting to the right*








						Планы по производству российских процессоров сдвигаются вправо
					

17 января 2020 года Мишустин утвердил Стратегию развития электронной промышленности Российской Федерации на период до 2030 года, в которой планировалось создать на территории России фабрики по производству микропроцессоров по технологии до 5 нм к этому самому 2030-му году. В Стратегии есть такая...




					zen.yandex.ru


----------



## rigoletto@ (May 17, 2022)

TerryBullMan said:


> If any of you want the idea of the original post to be possible, you may want to make
> an attempt with a few suggestions:
> 1. Become involved in the qemu-developers mailing list.
> 2. Join the POWER foundation. You will have access to the assembly instructions.
> ...



Did you really made assumptions and jumped to conclusions, don't you?  

The subject have literally nothing to do with POWER and very little with SPARC[1]. This is about Elbrus architecture.

Anyway, there are people already working on it or at least they were.

[1] nothing in practice.


----------



## astyle (May 17, 2022)

I have to agree with rigoletto@ 's assessment. It's unclear what qemu, POWER and SPARC have to do with development of a totally different architecture.  I'm guessing that they are usable as reference designs that Elbrus can try and imitate.


----------



## rigoletto@ (May 17, 2022)

TerryBullMan said:


> A legal question for you:
> Do you have the forensic evidence
> to support your conclusions
> about my cognitive processes?



Meh. First it was *obviously a joke* but now you just proved you assumed things and jumped to conclusions... Thank you.



TerryBullMan said:


> My suggestion for Qemu is a well thought out idea.



Thread 78073/post-530921 ↓


arrowd said:


> In case anyone's interested, I got my hands on Elbrus QEmu emulator and managed to execute a simple assembly-written Hello World executable on qemu-bsd-user. This is not much, but at least some movement in this direction.





TerryBullMan said:


> Do you have a physical device that has the Elbrus CPU on it?





TerryBullMan said:


> Did any of you even bother to see what type of architecture it is?



Thread 78073/post-567262 ↓


rigoletto@ said:


> Anyway, there are people already working on it or at least they were.



_And yes, there is someone with hardware in hands too._



TerryBullMan said:


> 2. Join the POWER foundation. You will have access to the assembly instructions.



Can you explain in any sane way how, by any possible means, joining the POWER foundation would help accessing MCST's Elbrus instructions?

Again, you just made it clear.  *You obviously assumed things and jumped to conclusions, like everyone does every now and then.*


----------



## rigoletto@ (May 17, 2022)

I really admire your effort but as I said in my previous post, the people who is/was working on it already have access to Elbrus hardware.

One of them is arrowd who is a FreeBSD developer too. I suppose he would have contacted danfe@ at this point.

Anyway, you won't find it easily (but just because this is in Russian only) but, in short, MSCT cooperate (for free) with anyone willing to port _things_ to Elbrus architecture, and IIRC the all necessary documentation is publicly available on their website, but again only in Russian.

At this point, in order to help, this is not just necessary to have the technical capabilities but this is also mandatory to have a good domain of the Russian language:

Thread 78073/post-489641



DJs3000 said:


> Write me an email djs500@mail.ru In Russian, I will tell you about the plans. When I can get the cross-compiler, we can start working. I think there will be a lot of work.



Thank you.


----------



## shkhln (May 17, 2022)

TerryBullMan said:


> If you have the money and are able to contact people
> in the Russian Federation,  perhaps then
> an opportunity will exist for you to be able to buy one.


 If things continue in the current direction, the government might sell you a person or two.


----------



## Deleted member 70435 (May 17, 2022)

apparently you don't understand this architecture very well read this article in russian do the translation








						Легенды и мифы процессора Эльбрус в примерах
					

В ответ на мою статью про тупиковость развития линейки процессоров Эльбрус в качестве базовой платформы для отечественных general-purpose CPU, пользователь @alexanius (Алексей Маркин) написал свою...




					habr.com


----------



## Deleted member 70435 (May 18, 2022)

I already had a look, in the development of this architecture,








						Pro100Alesha’s gists
					

GitHub Gist: star and fork Pro100Alesha's gists by creating an account on GitHub.




					gist.github.com


----------



## shkhln (May 18, 2022)

ЧЗХ?


----------



## rigoletto@ (May 18, 2022)

shkhln said:


> ЧЗХ?


This is a family forum, please.


----------



## astyle (May 18, 2022)

rigoletto@ said:


> This is a family forum, please.


I can expand shkhln 's abbreviation into a plenty colorful expression in Russian... But you gotta have a pretty good handle on the Russian language, AND its colorful expressions to be able to understand that turn in the conversation. And I can respond with a pun 

Slovak!

But even with that, the Russian sourpuss attitude can get in the way of good communication and technical collaboration. 


I do disagree with 'Family' part of 'Family forum' assessment, though... The intended audience of this forum is for the technically inclined public... Yeah, being polite and professional is expected, and having commitments (other than the FreeBSD workstations) should be respected - but I don't see this as 'family oriented'. I think the forums do have a section for gaming and whatnot... Our section on security can be thought of as 'keeping the family safe', but it's a bit too heavy on technical details, and has very little mention of 'I gotta keep my baby's iphone behind the pf firewall' type of content you'd see on TenForums.com


----------



## rigoletto@ (May 18, 2022)

astyle I was annoying shkhln. He/she knows that.


----------



## shkhln (May 19, 2022)

I don't know about colorfulness, but that's a relatively direct translation of "WTF".


----------



## astyle (May 19, 2022)

A steady diet of anekdotov.net will do that to people who can read it.


----------



## rigoletto@ (May 19, 2022)

I suppose astyle was commenting about the colorfulness of the Russian language in itself, technically (as to speak), and not in relation to the human physical expression during its pronunciation or use. The own technicalities of the pronunciation of the Russian language hold possibilities of human physical expression, which basically make the language technical sounding or ever pessimistic sounding to some people.

If you have no idea of what I'm talking about pay attention to the Belarusian language which doesn't have this characteristic, and is warmer sounding and allows a lot of more human physical expression.

*[EDIT]*

Just to add one thing, Russian Language is a «stressed pressured language» or Russians have a «stressed pressured speech»[1], which means there is an automatically tendency to shorter the atonic part of the words in an automatic tentative to pronounce it using the same amount of time used to pronounce the stressed part, what make the technical sounding thing ever more _pronounced_.

A good example is Portuguese, this is «stressed pressured» in Portugal but not in Brazil, what in practice means the Portuguese _eat_ a lot of vowels when speaking the words, but in Russian the vowels often isn't ever there (as to speak).

*Eg.* colesterol (cholesterol)

*Brazillian pronunciation:* `colesterol`
*Portuguese pronunciation:* `colstrol` or ever `clstrol`

[1] these terms may not be 100% correct with the term used by linguists, but in the worse scenario this is not far.


----------



## astyle (May 21, 2022)

Just how off-topic did we get here? I can as well nitpick on proper usage of English, the forums' official language:


TerryBullMan said:


> You may judge me so long as you agree to be judged with me.


Poor English. The proper term would be by. 

Completely different meanings, which I leave as an exercise for TBM to figure out.


----------



## rigoletto@ (May 22, 2022)

Summoning Trihexagonal


----------



## astyle (May 22, 2022)

rigoletto@ said:


> Summoning Trihexagonal


Best Daemon Summon ever! (although that one is way past Daemon by now).


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (May 29, 2022)

rigoletto@ said:


> Summoning Trihexagonal


At your Service and forever in your debt, my longtime Friend.

Thank you from the bottomless pit of darkness which was my heart for drawing my attention to the Brazil Nut. 

Your page is still up on my site the same as the day it went up, though ruffwoof gets the most hits of any one of us.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Jun 17, 2022)

Graviton presented the Angara motherboard with the Russian Arm-processor Baikal-M
					

The Russian company Graviton, which develops and manufactures computer technology, presented the Angara motherboard. It is equipped with the Russian Baikal-M processor. The manufacturer notes that the assembly of computers based on this board will begin this summer. It will become the basis of a...




					www.aroged.com


----------



## rigoletto@ (Jun 20, 2022)

Сбербанк заявил о катастрофическом несоответствии «Эльбрусов» своим требованиям
					

Сбербанк провел тестирование двух типов серверов на «Эльбрусах» и, несмотря на определенное приятное удивление...



					www.cnews.ru
				




Interesting point:


> "According to Zhbankov, in order to meet most of the requirements, you just need to repackage the server without touching the processor and OS itself"


----------



## astyle (Jun 21, 2022)

rigoletto@ said:


> Сбербанк заявил о катастрофическом несоответствии «Эльбрусов» своим требованиям
> 
> 
> Сбербанк провел тестирование двух типов серверов на «Эльбрусах» и, несмотря на определенное приятное удивление...
> ...


I'm sorry, but you've got a pretty bad translation. The article merely says that the Elbrus processors just lack the power of Xeons, which is what it takes to handle the mission-critical applications that Sberbank needs to run, such as containers, VMs, Java, and the like.

Edit: A more careful reading showed that the Elbrus processors were actually declared to "Have potential", because the performance discrepancy is only by a factor of 2-3, not 20-30 as initially expected.

Edit 2: Found the point, the translation is actually accurate... Yeah, the software could use re-organizing, but the processor did show potential.  The reason 'woeful inadequacy and inability to meet hard requirements' is even mentioned is to set expectations for development of the processor itself.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Jun 21, 2022)

The major problem was the server _packaging_ not the processor. They tested the Elbrus 8S, need to wait the test with Elbrus 16S and an _adequate packaged_ server.


----------



## astyle (Jun 21, 2022)

rigoletto@ said:


> The major problem was the server _packaging_ not the processor. They tested the Elbrus 8S, need to wait the test with Elbrus 16S and an _adequate packaged_ server.


So why not just replicate the existing setup to see if the Elbrus can handle it? I know this question is really out of our hands, but the testing methodology is just flabbergasting. Not even a fair comparison.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Jun 21, 2022)

As far I understand by the Sberbank words, a side of the lower than Xeon performance - _albeit considerable higher than expected_, this is the actual motherboard/server design that is really unsuitable for them. This is MCST job to provide the correct thing and support, including because other potential clients should bring the same or similar issues.

This is important to note MCST basically is a living Soviet research institute, they don't have a lot of clue of what is used in industry. Also, this test was not for PR but to address what is necessary for potential adoption.

This is also interesting to point out Sberbank is far from being just a bank these days, they are heavily invested "technology" things, in some terms rivaling with Yandex.


----------



## Deleted member 70435 (Jun 21, 2022)

rigoletto@ said:


> As far I understand by the Sberbank words, a side of the lower than Xeon performance - _albeit considerable higher than expected_, this is the actual motherboard/server design that is really unsuitable for them. This is MCST job to provide the correct thing and support, including because other potential clients should bring the same or similar issues.
> 
> This is important to note MCST basically is a living Soviet research institute, they don't have a lot of clue of what is used in industry. Also, this test was not for PR but to address what is necessary for potential adoption.
> 
> This is also interesting to point out Sberbank is far from being just a bank these days, they are heavily invested "technology" things, in some terms rivaling with Yandex.


well it seems, that even if they don't have a knowledge, today what we have of documentation, on the internet and people available to work, and today the Russian scientists, don't have the mentality of the soviet union.


----------



## astyle (Jun 22, 2022)

Vadim Alexandrov said:


> well it seems, that even if they don't have a knowledge, today what we have of documentation, on the internet and people available to work, and today the Russian scientists, don't have the mentality of the soviet union.


That mentality was heavy on theory, but light on practice. Soviet-era elevators were quite crappy.


----------



## arrowd (Sep 7, 2022)

Interested hackers can now play with Elbrus QEmu emulator on FreeBSD without the need to run any proprietary closed-source Linux binaries.



			arrowd's blog - Setting up a FreeBSD playground for Elbrus2000 architecture


----------



## shkhln (Sep 10, 2022)

Curiously enough, the person writing this new open-source compiler backend exclusively uses the GitHub's web UI for committing (that is, the guy edits the code directly in the web browser and, no, it's not some kind of web IDE). I don't know about you, but that scares the shit out of me.

Might be a workaround for an overly paranoid firewall/proxy setup on the day job, I suppose…


----------



## astyle (Sep 10, 2022)

shkhln said:


> Might be a workaround for an overly paranoid firewall/proxy setup on the day job, I suppose…


Unless that kind of thing is specifically OK to do on the day job (Like AMD having in-house engineers working on Linux drivers for their GPU's), I'd think it's a good idea to rethink the workflow.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Sep 10, 2022)

Likely the code is developed in private and then just copied/pasted to GitHub to the public.


----------



## shkhln (Sep 10, 2022)

I just remembered the aforementioned web UI editor doesn't allow making changes to multiple files in a single commit (it's basically intended for minor Readme edits, anything else is abuse), so that's probably just the file uploading feature. Not as worrisome, but still kind of meh.


----------

