From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:48319) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fYCZu-0003v6-PK for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 27 Jun 2018 11:41:55 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fYCZp-0002yC-TW for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 27 Jun 2018 11:41:54 -0400 Received: from mout.kundenserver.de ([212.227.126.130]:36551) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fYCZp-0002wV-Jj for qemu-devel@nongnu.org; Wed, 27 Jun 2018 11:41:49 -0400 References: <20180625131253.11218-1-kraxel@redhat.com> <20180625131253.11218-2-kraxel@redhat.com> <6ad67e44-b002-1cd7-cfd1-2d98ebde1a7e@redhat.com> <20180627065126.mwzdxshr3njzok7n@sirius.home.kraxel.org> <0df8a05c-43fc-6e85-b13c-d3f5c4691964@redhat.com> <87fu18ach6.fsf_-_@dusky.pond.sub.org> <20180627085217.blrsx5lmu4sau4fd@sirius.home.kraxel.org> <5d591d6c-ccc4-cc86-ebbc-3c66a6817c70@redhat.com> From: Laurent Vivier Message-ID: <4c86fb26-f7c3-e66e-33a2-dbbfe2e70960@vivier.eu> Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2018 17:41:27 +0200 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Re: [Qemu-devel] Drop support for 32bit hosts in qemu? (was: [PULL 1/6] audio/hda: create millisecond timers that handle IO) List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: =?UTF-8?Q?Philippe_Mathieu-Daud=c3=a9?= , Thomas Huth , Aurelien Jarno , Peter Maydell Cc: Gerd Hoffmann , BALATON Zoltan , Markus Armbruster , Martin Schrodt , qemu-devel@nongnu.org, Max Reitz Le 27/06/2018 à 15:33, Philippe Mathieu-Daudé a écrit : > On 06/27/2018 06:09 AM, Thomas Huth wrote: >> On 27.06.2018 10:52, Gerd Hoffmann wrote: >>> Hi, >>> >>>>> Is QEMU still useful on 32-bit hosts? Honest question! >>>> >>>> I guess it depends on what 32-bit hosts you consider. If you look at only >>>> x86 vs. x86_64 then probably x86 is not that important any more but for some >>>> embedded systems/SoCs 32bit might still be common and QEMU useful for those >>>> (also as host not only emulated). >>> >>> Well. I've used kvm with an 32bit arm soc (cubietruck). It's very >>> slow. And all the arm architecture improvements to support kvm better >>> are for aarch64 only. >>> >>>> Another option might be to not support audio/hda on 32bit hosts. It's not >>>> nice either but a lot nicer than dropping support for 32bit hosts >>>> alltogether to fix a problem in device emulation. >>> >>> But it also is not useful and a waste of resources to maintain 32bit >>> host compatibility if nobody actually uses that ... >>> >>> For me testbuilds are the only reason to compile qemu for 32bit hosts. >>> Since years. >> >> Well, while that's true for you, me and likely most of us developers, >> you can not know whether this is also true for all users of qemu. Thus >> this needs to be announced first for a couple of releases so that people >> have a chance to speak up whether they still need this or not. As >> mentioned earlier, embedded devices are often still 32-bit and I know >> that there really are people who use QEMU on embedded devices. >> >> But I think we could at least announce now already that we intend to >> drop support for 32-bit hosts in the future (maybe not in 2 releases >> already, but, let's say in 2020? 2020 is already the EOL of Python 2, so >> that will rule out a bunch of other legacy hosts, too). > > linux-user is certainly widely used on ARMv6 / ARMv7. > > Known user cases: > > - run ARMv7 binaries on ARMv6 > - run armhf binaries on armel > - run x86-64 binaries on ARMv7 > I run i386 binaries on ARMv6. I use it to run i386 printer driver on my raspberry Pi B+. Brother doesn't provide the binary for ARM, neither the source. Thanks, Laurent