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Description
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Sun Studio 12 will support AMD Family 10h processor, it depends on the
linker and header support.
Background:
AMD's new processor "Family 10h" aka "Greyhound" is going to be
available soon, which is different from the K8 family(opteron is
of the K8 family). The existence of Revision A and revision B
chips of Family 10h are known at present.
AMD Family 10h Revision A chips codename is Barcelona.
The x86/x64 Sun Studio compilers need to support the new
instructions set and do the optimization work for the Family 10
chips.
The new bit in header file /usr/include/sys/auxv_386.h is not
only needed for marking the binary with sse4a code, but also
needed for compiling the new code in the compiler and assembler,
Because the CBE OS for building Studio 12 and x86/x64 assembler is
Solaris 9, so this header file needs to be available in Solaris 9
updates or Solaris 9 patch.
The checking and running for such binary code needs Solaris
linker and utilities/runtime(like file, isainfo etc) support.
The linker HWCap support will be needed for Solaris 10 updates
or later version.
A few notes worth to pay attention:
*The family 10h has new instruction set called sse4a, the revison A
chip does not support the Intel isa sse4. There are six new
instructions in sse4a.
*Some of the old SSE instruction are allowed to access misaligned
128-bit operands without causing a fault on the Family 10h chips.
*The marking of a binary of sse4a code is important, since such code
will cause a fault on a system without a Family 10h processor,
e.g. the AMD K8 family processor. Hence the checking of loading
sse4a binary by linker on the executing system is important too.
*The FCS code freeze time for SunStudio12 is Mar 11, 2007,
RR is June 6, 2007
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