[ydl-gen] Building Firefox 4.0 under YDL 6.2 PPC

[Derick Centeno]

On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:15:47 -0700
Terence G Christopher <t.g.christopher at ieee.org> wrote:

> Having installed YDL on my play station 3m and then having tried and 
> failed to install my wireless keyboard, I have been following the 
> various messages that have developed  over the past 6 months.It is a 
> great pity that the incompleteness of YDL and lack of readily
> accessible documentation together with the failure of Sony to permit
> the machine to be readily used and switch between operating systems
> should destroy what could have been a fascinating and enriching
> engineering development, It is disheartening to see discussions that
> are unchanged from 30 years ago which to me show that all of the talk
> about object oriented code, and clean interfaces was just that talk.I
> realise that the increasing complexity of machines and programmes
> greatly increases the challenges, however Many people such as myself
> do not want to spend our lives fiddling trying to get commonly used
> software to work on a machine. It is to me a measure of the
> inadequacy of the development and support operation. This discourages
> me from even attempting to use the machine. So no my play station
> is merely an expensive and clumsy blue ray player. What a pity.
> sincerely
> Terence Christopher

Hi Terrance:

It may be of some interest that if you are interested in continuing to
run your PS3 with YDL and sacrificing the ability to participate with
Sony's current vision for the PS3 you could refer to the YDL Board at
http://yellowdog-board.com/

Although I do believe that the YDL Board was focused on supporting the
PS3, you may pick up some ideas with others regarding what solutions
remain or exist.  Some members have taken action and pursued legal
action against Sony; I'm not sure that would interest you but there are
other threads and topics which may.  Two threads covering
a variety of topics include:

http://yellowdog-board.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=7266

http://yellowdog-board.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=7545

I really wish that I had something more positive to report in regards
to the PS3 but I can say that the YDL Board is well administered by
persons well versed in the PS3 and the admins there could be useful.
It is possible you may find solutions which are difficult to find
elsewhere which would allow you to continue your research effort.

As for the incompleteness of YDL, surely you are aware that both Terra
Soft Solutions and later Fixstars were always at a disadvantage as they
were (and in the case of Fixstars still remain) comparatively tiny
companies with finite resources.  Support for the PowerPC was always a
very odd position for any company because the marketplace for
everything supporting that CPU was always small; few know for instance
that Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, really thought that Linux
for the PowerPC was a losing proposition; his actual comment was
actually much harsher. For TSS and later Fixstars to make something out
of an essentially non-existent marketplace is an amazing accomplishment.

Having expressed the above the discussion as I'm sure you are aware is
academic.  IBM announced last year in an article published by Ars
Technica that they were ceasing production on the Cell and moving
onwards towards utilizing what they've learned from working with the
Cell by applying techniques developed for it to be implemented with
hybridized multicore chips developed by Intel which have begun to hit
the marketplace already.  These new systems are not only multicore but
a few systems developed by AMD for instance are CPU/GPU hybrids as well.

I discussed the details and refered to the various articles within the
YDL Board.  There is another technological issue which spelled the end
of PowerPC development as it has existed in the past.  Fixstars
formally announced that YDL 6.2 is the last version of YDL to be
developed for PowerPC systems.  Fixstars has moved YDL and all other
products to be supporting Intel compatibles only. Although
Fixstars does continue to support PowerPC systems these services are
all fee based contractual services.

The only free current version of YDL which exists is YDL with CUDA
which only runs on Intel compatibles.

Now we can swim down memory lane or move forward with the scientific
and market realities such as they are.  As you are already probably
aware there exist hexacore hybridized CPU/GPU systems that are laptops
-- the Cell never developed that far.  Depending on who you listen to
either an interesting age of technical development is over or moving
forward.

All the best...