Re: PATCH: support for NEC SX architecture

[Erich Focht <efocht at hpce dot nec dot com>]

Hi Dave,

Dave Korn wrote:
> Jaka MoÄnik wrote:
> > On Wed, 2009-06-03 at 15:39 +0100, Dave Korn wrote:
> > > All of a sudden I'm uncertain whether it's suitable to include support
> > > for a somewhat private undocumented target in FSF sources.  I don't know
> > > if there's a policy about it but it stands out from other targets in this
> > > regard.  Do you have any idea how many of these supercomputers there are
> > > in use out there?
> > well, the sources are GPLed, implemented independently of any existing, 
> > proprietary code, and well documented. the submission has also been 
> > approved by erich (cc-ed above).
>
>   Erich, is there any chance at all NEC could be persuaded to change policy
> and release the CPU and ISA documentation?  That would be the ideal situation.

since every customer gets the documentation and most of the programmers 
who request it get a quick reference guide, we didn't think this is a 
problem. There's no place on the docs stating "do not disclose" or 
"secret" (though: reproduction rights stay with the company, as usual 
for books). But I see the problem: nobody could just start coding SX 
assembler with just the info we have on the sx-gcc page. So we'll do two 
things: start improving the docs on the sx-gcc web page and find out 
about possibilities to put the official SX CPU docs somewhere onto the 
web. This might take a while...

Best regards,
Erich