RFR (M): 8036767 PPC64: Support for little endian execution model

[Magnus Ihse Bursie]

On 2014-03-17 05:13, David Holmes wrote:
> On 15/03/2014 7:11 AM, Alexander Smundak wrote:
>> Ping.
>
> My position hasn't changed. I don't think this needs to be, or should 
> be, a distinct architecture.
>
> I've added build-dev to cc list to see what our build experts think.

I'm not sure I've completely understood the discussion (it has jumped 
around a bit between mailing lists), but I think I agree with David 
here. Architecture is a term that implies general common features, not 
specific differences.

While hotspot and the rest of the jdk build is not currently in sync 
with this terminology, in the common configure and makefiles we use the 
terminology "target cpu" (which can be for instance "x86_64" or 
"sparcv9" and "target cpu arch" (which can be for instance "x86" or 
"sparc").

Regarding ppc, we currently define the target cpu arch "ppc" and two 
target cpus, "ppc" and "ppc64".

Perhaps it would be more approriate to consider this a separate target 
cpu ("ppc64le"), but not a separate target cpu architecture? But that 
would be on the top-level -- I'm not sure how that would map properly to 
the current hotspot build system.

/Magnus