[Soc-coordination] GSOC project(s) for arm64 porting

[Aron Xu]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 1:02 AM, Steve McIntyre <steve at einval.com> wrote:
> [ discussed briefly on irc yesterday, now coming to the list as
>   suggested before putting anything in the wiki ]
>
> Hi folks,
>
> I'd like to suggest a project (or maybe several) for the Summer of
> Code this year, working on arm64 (aka AArch64) porting. There's some
> efforts going on already using software models to assist with porting
> and validation, and we're expecting to see the first real hardware
> sometime this summer. I'm working in Linaro on some related projects
> (see https://wiki.linaro.org/LEG/Engineering/OPTIM/Assembly for
> example).
>
> As arm64 is a new architecture, there's quite a bit of work that could
> usefully be done by students in helping us to get the port going:
>
>  * setup of some infrastructure for building packages, both "natively"
>    in a software model and via cross-building
>
>  * development of a test harness to compare the output of native- and
>    cross-builders, to help us verify that cross-building is working
>    correctly
>
>  * direct porting of software to the new architecture, targeting both
>    upstream development and Debian packaging (whichever is necessary)
>
> There are several DDs around who might be interested in mentoring
> projects in this area (me, Wookey, Riku, at least...) so we could run
> several projects for different students if that fits OK.
>
> Thoughts?
>

As you might already noticed that we've got an idea about doing a
mips64/mips64el port, I think this arm64 port shares quite a lot with
it and the only significant different stuff is ARM vs MIPS. We've
received some applications, even there is student trying themselves
for preparation and gets very positive progress. Do you think we
really need so much porting projects when there are already so many
people working on ARM-based systems?



--
Regards,
Aron Xu