Challenges and discoveries bringing open source software to the PowerPC64LE world.
Channel: LinuxConfAu 2018 - Sydney, Australia
Date: 25/01/2018

Leonardo Bianconi

http://lca2018.linux.org.au/schedule/presentation/25/

PowerPC64 little-endian mode was introduced with POWER8 system family, making it easier to port x86_64 applications to it. This is the main target of technologies provided by OpenPOWER Foundation, which is a collaboration for Power Architecture products.

This talk will show the biggest challenges found to port a software initially designed to x86_64 architecture, and what were the solutions adopted, beyond expose some differences between both architectures. Some topics are:

 * How to handle the frame differences.
 * Push/Pop values dynamically in a PPC64 frame.
 * Adapting assembly memory operations.
 * Using TOC (Table Of Contents) as an amazing tool.

HHVM, which is the main target of this talk, is a PHP interpreter built by Facebook, which implements the JIT (Just-In-Time) compilation technique to dynamically translate part of itself into assembly code, making its execution faster.

This talk was given at Linux.conf.au 2018 (LCA2018) which was held on 22-26 January 2018 in Sydney Australia.

linux.conf.au is a conference about the Linux operating system, and all aspects of the thriving ecosystem of Free and Open Source Software that has grown up around it. Run since 1999, in a different Australian or New Zealand city each year, by a team of local volunteers, LCA invites more than 500 people to learn from the people who shape the future of Open Source. For more information on the conference see https://linux.conf.au/

#linux.conf.au #linux #foss #opensource