Does developing applications for SPARC, IBM power CPU require separate compilers, other than x86, x86-64 targets?

Question

Does developing applications for SPARC , IBM PowerPC require separate compliers, other than x86 and x86-64 targets?

If true, how easily could x86, x64 binaries in Linux be ported to SPARC and PowerPC? Is there a way to simulate these environments using virtualization?

Answer 1

First answer is, yes, to develop compiled code for Power Architecture or SPARC you need compilers that will generate code for those processors. A compiler that generates x86 or x86_64 code will not generate code that runs on Power Architecture or SPARC. You might find cross compilers running on x86 (32 or 64) that will generate Power or SPARC code, though. But the other thing to be aware of is the object file format (elf, xcoff, and so on). Instruction set is just part of the picture. You might get clearer answers if your provide more details of your particular starting point and goals.

Second, one normally doesn't talk of porting binaries. We port source code, which may include assembly language as well as C or other languages. The process for doing this includes compiler selection, after which you can begin an iterative process of compiling, porting, compiling, and linking the code for the new hardware. I'm omitting many details. Again, if you provide more specifics in your question, you might get more specific answers.

Third, as others have said, no, you can't use virtualization in the scenarios you allude to. You might find acceptable emulation solutions. Again, please provide more specifics if you can.

Answer 2

No, virtualization is not the answer. Virtualization takes your hardware platform and creates an independent "virtual" machine of the same hardware. So when running on x86, you use virtualization to create a second x86 machine.

To simulate a completely different hardware architecture, you would want to look into emulation .

How easy / hard it is to port software from one architecture to another architecture depends completely on how the software was written. If it uses something particular to one architecture but not the other (for example, x86 can handle non-aligned memory accesses while SPARC does not) you are going to need to fix things like that. Another example that could make it difficult to port would be if the software has assumed a specific endian-ess of the hardware.

Answer 3

SPARC, IBM PowerPC require separate compliers, other than x86 and x86-64 targets?

I hate to be really snippy, but given that IBM PowerPC and SPARC do not support the x86 or x86-64 command sets (ie talk totally separate machine langauge), where did you even get the idea they would be compatible?

Is there a way to simulate these environments using virtualization?

Possibly yes, but it would be REALLY slow, because you would have to either translate the machine code, or - well - interpret it. Hardware virtualiaztion would not work, given that the CPU architectures are different. SPARC and PowerPC are not just "different labels for the same thing", they are really different internally.

Answer 4

Use Java or LLVM , or try QEMU to test other CPUs.

It's easy if your code was written to be portable, it's not if it wasn't. Varying sizes of data types per platform and code that depends on it, inline assembly, etc. will make it harder.

Home page for LLVM and QEMU:

• http://llvm.org/
• http://wiki.qemu.org/Main_Page