From Fedora Project Wiki


LLVM support on 64-bit POWER systems

Summary

Power Systems needs to ensure that LLVM supports the platform.

Owner

  • Email: scheel@us.ibm.com

Current status

  • Targeted release: Fedora 18
  • Last updated: 2012-08-13
  • Percentage of completion: 10%


Detailed Description

IBM Power Systems will be working in Fedora 18 to test, stabilize, and complete any missing features for LLVM for 32-bit and 64-bit applications. Work will include both statically compiled applications (with clang) and dynamic or JIT'd applications as used by LLVMpipe.

This work is ultimately about parity of Power Systems platform. No new feature/function is anticipated.

This feature only affects IBM Power Systems for the Fedora Secondary Arch.

Benefit to Fedora

Consistency between hardware platforms in order to have the same user experience on IBM Power Systems as on Intel platforms. Primary use is to be able to support LLVMpipe to enable 3D graphics on IBM Power Systems, see feature page

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/VNCServerWithLLVMpipe

Scope

No new features/functions. Simple platform parity for IBM Power Systems to fully support LLVM in order to support LLVMpipe for 3D graphics over VNC.

How To Test

Existing tests should execute to parity with x86 platforms. Major consumers/users of LLVM in Fedora are:

 CLang
 LLVMpipe

So recompilation and use of those on IBM Power Systems running Fedora 18 should work without problems.

User Experience

Primary focus is functional parity.

Dependencies

None.

Contingency Plan

None necessary, revert to previous release behavior.

Documentation

Existing LLVM documentation should be updated, if necessary, to indicate it works for ppc64 as it does for x86. This will be handled upstream.

Release Notes

Fedora 18 now has full support for LLVM on IBM Power Systems. This allows the use of the new Software Rendered based on LLVMpipe to provide a great experience using Gnome3 or any other 3D application on IBM Power Systems on Fedora.


Comments and Discussion