[pypy-commit] extradoc extradoc: merge

[hakanardo]

Author: Hakan Ardo <hakan at debian.org>
Branch: extradoc
Changeset: r4792:e5e0c9a46550
Date: 2012-09-12 07:53 +0200
http://bitbucket.org/pypy/extradoc/changeset/e5e0c9a46550/

Log:	merge

diff --git a/blog/draft/arm-status-update.rst b/blog/draft/arm-status-update.rst
new file mode 100644
--- /dev/null
+++ b/blog/draft/arm-status-update.rst
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+ARM Backend News Update
+=======================
+
+Starting with the good news, we finally merged the ``arm-backend-2`` branch
+into the main development line. As described in previous posts the main goal of
+this branch was to add support for ARM processors to PyPY's JIT.  As a general
+byproduct the multi-architecture support should have tgo we improved several
+details of PyPy to better support non-x86 architectures such as ARM and the
+in-progress support for PPC64.  The JIT requires an ARMv7 or newer processor
+with a VFP unit targeting the ARM application Profile. These are the same
+requirements as those of the Ubuntu ARM port and correspond to the hardware
+used in most smartphones and development boards offered today.
+The non-JIT version
+might support previous architecture versions, but will be slow.
+
+Floating Point Support
+----------------------
+The JIT backends supports floating point numbers and therefore requires a VFP
+unit to be present.  The **Procedure Call Standard for the ARM Architecture**
+(`PDF`_) describes in the *base procedure call standard* how parameters are
+passed in processor registers and on the stack when calling a function.
+
+When supporting floating points there are two incompatible procedure call
+standards and three ways of handling floats. Usually they are referred to as
+*softfp*, *soft-float* and *hard-float*. The first two use the core registers
+to pass floating point arguments. The first uses a software based
+float-implementation, while the second can use a floating point unit. The
+latter and incompatible one requires a floating point unit and uses the
+coprocessor registers to pass floating arguments to calls. A detailed
+comparison can be found `here`_.
+
+The PyPy ARM backend currently supports the soft-float calling convention,
+which is the most common one. This means that we have to copy floating point
+values from the VFP to core registers and the stack when generating code for a
+call that involves floating point values. Because the soft- and hard-float
+calling conventions are incompatible, PyPy for ARM currently only will work on
+systems built using soft-float.  More and more GNU/Linux distributions for ARM
+are supporting hard-float. There is almost finished support in the JIT backend
+for the hard-float calling convention, but we seem to have hit an issue with
+ctypes/libffi on ARM that is blocking us to run our tests against the
+hard-float implementation.
+
+
+Testing and Infrastructure
+--------------------------
+
+By now we have an infrastructure the allows us to create cross-translated
+binaries for ARM. Currently we compile binaries in a 32bit Ubuntu 12.04
+environment using scratchbox2_ to encapsulate the cross-compiler calls. The
+results can be downloaded and tested from our `nightly build server`_. Some
+documentation on how to cross-translate is available in the `PyPy docs`_.
+
+We also have some hardware to run the subset of the PyPy test-suite relevant to
+the ARM-JIT backend and to run the tests suite that tests the translated ARM
+binaries. The nightly tests are run on a Beagleboard-xM_ and an i.MX53_
+versatile board (kindly provided by Michael Foord), both boards running the ARM port `Ubuntu
+12.04 Precise Pangolin`_. The current results for the different builders can be
+seen on the `PyPy buildbot`_. As can be seen there are still some issues to be
+fixed.
+
+.. _`PyPy buildbot`: http://buildbot.pypy.org/summary?branch=%3Ctrunk%3E&category=linux-armel
+.. _`PyPy docs`: https://bitbucket.org/pypy/pypy/src/default/pypy/doc/arm.rst
+.. _i.MX53: http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=IMX53QSB
+.. _Beagleboard-xM: http://beagleboard.org/hardware-xm
+.. _`Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin`: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM 
+.. _`scratchbox2`: http://maemo.gitorious.org/scratchbox2
+.. _`nightly build server`: http://buildbot.pypy.org/nightly/trunk/
+.. _`PDF`: http://infocenter.arm.com/help/topic/com.arm.doc.ihi0042d/IHI0042D_aapcs.pdf
+.. _`here`: http://wiki.debian.org/ArmHardFloatPort/VfpComparison