Debian "loongson2f"-optimized N32 ABI port
Mentors: AnthonyFok, ?ZhangLe, ?FaiWong
Summary: Create a new fully-optimized "loongson2f" N32 ABI port for Debian to serve Gdium, Yeeloong, and more
Required skills:
- Familiarity with shell scripting and C programming.
Familiarity with Cross-Compiled Linux From Scratch.
- Familiarity with Debian packaging, system management and configuration.
- Wide programming skill to resolve porting problems.
Description:
While the current Debian official "mipsel" port (compiled with MIPS-I instruction set and O32 ABI for maximum compatibility) runs on the Loongson 2F CPU, significant performance improvement (25%–40%) can be obtained by recompiling the whole system with "-march=loongson2f -mabi=n32 -mplt" using gcc-4.4, glibc-2.9 and binutils-2.19, as shown in Gentoo developer and Loongson guru ?ZhangLe's latest effort in this area. With the growing popularity of Loongson 2F based computers such as Dexxon/EMTEC Gdium Liberty 1000 Netbook and Lemote Yeeloong 8089 Notebook, both built on entirely open-source hardware and software, there is a real need and interest to have Debian running at top performance on these machines, especially to serve the greater cause of promoting free/open-source software and of providing computer-assisted education to those who most need it.
Please contact AnthonyFok (IRC nick: foka), ?ZhangLe (IRC nick: r0bertz) or ?FaiWong (IRC nick: lazyfai) on irc.freenode.net #gdium and #beijinglug channels, or on irc.debian.org #debian-soc channel before applying.
Interested student: ShaLiu
See also:
Porting openSUSE to MIPS platform project at openSUSE GSoC 2009, which gave us an idea to turn the Debian Loongson 2F optimization effort into a Debian GSoC project too.
Some background information on o32/n32/n64
Original PDF can be found here: http://www.prompro.com/Address_Models_Oracle.pdf
史上最快Loongson 2F上的操作系统诞生了 "The fastest OS on Loongson 2F in history has been born!" - Forum discussion on a new Gentoo Loongson 2F optimized n32 ABI build (mostly in Chinese)
One Laptop Per Hacker (OLPH) Project and OLPH Wiki with lots of technical information
Building a Cross Compiler a cross compiler should be a good start
more links to be added later...