Project proposal: AArch32 port

[Edward Nevill]

Hi,

I would like to propose the creation of a new project to port OpenJDK to
ARM's aarch32 architecture. The aarch32 architecture is the 32 bit side
of the ARMv8 architecture (the other side being aarch64).

There is already a port for aarch64 which has been upstreamed into JDK9,
thanks to the great work of Andrew Haley, Andrew Dinn and others however
32 bit support is missing.

The aarch64 architecture is broadly compatible with ARMv7 with only a
few minor differences most of which are not applicable to application
level code. It is proposed that the aarch32 port will also support
ARMv7.

ARMv6 could also be supported, but this would depend on the level of
community interest (ARMv6 is the architecture in the Raspberry Pi so
there may be significant community interest and involvement if we were
also to target ARMv6).

We already have a complete template interpreter thanks to the excellent
work of Joseph Joyce who presented his work at the recent Linaro Connect
conference. A copy of his slides is available at

http://openjdk.linaro.org/sfo15-openjdk-arm32.pdf

I have created a JIRA issue and uploaded webrevs of this port based on
JDK 9 to cr.openjdk.java.net.

JIRA Issue: https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8139303

Webrevs:

http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~enevill/8139303/webrev.hotspot/
http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~enevill/8139303/webrev.hs-comp/
http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~enevill/8139303/webrev.jdk/ 

The template interpreter is complete and runs a large variety of
applications (eclipse, jedit, galaxians, javac, although sadly it cannot
build itself as yet:-).

It is intended that the port will be a complete port of OpenJDK to
include Template Interpreter / C1 and possibly C2.

Can I please request the support of the Porters Group as the Sponsoring
Group with myself as project lead.

Many thanks,
Edward Nevill