Ports LoongArch

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dbhrscom

Hello！

About LoongArch Brief introduction

LoongArch is the RISC instruction set launched by loongson in 2021. The details are as follows:

LoongArch Reference Manual

​

It works on the loongsong 3a5000 processor.

I have two computers with this processors，Prepare to do some basic ports on FreeBSD

So I want to consult

Have you considered or started porting loongarch to BSD system?

And what exactly I need to do.

Thanks!!!
 
oOiOo said:
Hello,
To my knowledge, Loongsong architecture is based on MIPS. Unfortunately, even though MIPS is present in FreeBSD 13's source code , it's support has been removed on 2022/01/01 . Howether, NetBSD support Loongsong devices : http://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/evbmips/loongson/.
Regards
Click to expand...

In 2021, the 3a5000 processor released by Godson no longer uses the MIPS instruction set, but uses LoongArch, a new instruction set.
 
LoongArch is a RISC instruction set, which can be used for reference. However, when running Linux, LoongArch and MIPs are not compatible.
 
Crivens said:
In that case we are talking about a complete new port. Step #1 would be llvm support. Is that done?
Click to expand...
Please refer to
github.com

GitHub - loongson/llvm-project: The support for loongarch in this repository has been refactored and merged into the upstream repository of LLVM, so its mission is completed and it will be deleted soon. Please use the upstream repository directly in

The support for loongarch in this repository has been refactored and merged into the upstream repository of LLVM, so its mission is completed and it will be deleted soon. Please use the upstream re...
github.com github.com
 
I had checked at that time, and they were like mirages. And too little bang for too many bucks.
 
I hope this isn't rude to reply on such an old post, but I live in the US and managed to buy a MOREFINE Mini Host M700S off AliExpress, it has a Loongson 3A6000 processor. I'm also awaiting a micro-ATX motherboard that has the same processor. In any case, I'm willing to provide virtual machines if anybody has interest in porting. I also might be willing to fund the purchase of another MOREFINE Mini Host M700S if someone would prefer having an actual machine to test against.
 
adrianceleste said:
I hope this isn't rude to reply on such an old post, but I live in the US and managed to buy a MOREFINE Mini Host M700S off AliExpress, it has a Loongson 3A6000 processor. I'm also awaiting a micro-ATX motherboard that has the same processor. In any case, I'm willing to provide virtual machines if anybody has interest in porting. I also might be willing to fund the purchase of another MOREFINE Mini Host M700S if someone would prefer having an actual machine to test against.
Click to expand...
Those mobos come together with actual processor? nice, most mainstream mobos are advertised as having a specific compatible socket, rather than actual processor!
 
astyle said:
Those mobos come together with actual processor? nice, most mainstream mobos are advertised as having a specific compatible socket, rather than actual processor!
Click to expand...
Yeah, all the systems I've seen so far are BGA, I believe this is even true of some of the expensive "server" type motherboards/CPU combos. Not entirely unheard of, I have two BGA x86_64 systems:
Circling back to the loongson systems, another interesting thing about them is they use UEFI! My M700S has something allegedly based off of UDK2018 (link to the firmware github repo) o_O This is even after upgrading it with firmware from the linked repo! The VMs on the other hand, just seem to use tianocore, and if it wasn't clear, these CPUs do have virtualization extensions and can do hardware accelerated virtualization!
 
RetroComputingCollector said:
Apparently people would rather have support for an obscure MIPS variant rather than i386?
Click to expand...
I see Loongson putting in a significant amount of effort to support their chips.

For i386 all I see is deprecation. I recently installed openSUSE Leap 15.6 amd64 on my new workstation. You can install i386 libc to run i386 binaries but they no longer provide the i386 startup object file for GCC. That means it’s not possible to compile i386 on that platform with the system toolchain.
 
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I still don't Loongarch is worth supporting. I've never seen a single Loongarch machine, and I think that, even if it blows up in China, then it will be confined there. Sure i386 has reached the end of it's lifespan, but it is still in use in many places. I have never heard of a production use for Loongarch and if the machines are as rare as a useful post on Reddit, then it is not worth supporting.
 
I'd say that Loongson arch is well worth supporting, and has a ton of potential. With major chipmakers (Intel/AMD/Samsung/Qualcomm) each having a 'secret sauce' manufacturing process, Loongson very well could be the Open Source equivalent in the arena of chipmaking.

I would totally get behind the idea of installing FreeBSD on a Loongson chip!

As for production use of LoongArch - I'm sure their goal is to reach feature parity with PowerArch (yep, the IBM stuff that can run CheriBSD!).
 
LoongArch's upcoming customer: (Just kidding!)
1743967181990.png
 
Oh wow, this thread has had some activity. Well, to update things, I'm now using a µATX board that has a loongson processor in it, it is currently running debian unstable. It has 1TB of storage and 64GB of RAM, so a little of leg room to run VMs ;). In any case, if anyone was interested on time on a VM on this machine to do porting tasks, I would be willing to provide that. I realize this isn't the same as bare metal, but I imagine VMs might be an easier bringup target?
 
I interested in porting FreeBSD to loongarch, but as now I haven't enough time. If loongarch processors became popular in the future, porting software to it will very valuable in this time.

QEMU supports loongarch, but I don't have a kernel image to test it.
 
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