Date: Mon, 25 Oct 93 22:26:45 PDT From: smlieu (Sun Ming Lieu) To: engnews-distrib Subject: [Inside Cygnus Engineering, Oct 1993] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vol 2 No 10 INSIDE CYGNUS ENGINEERING October 1993 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Inside Cygnus Engineering (ICE) is published monthly for customers of Cygnus Support. Our objective is to provide a relevant but informal summary of news and ongoing activities. Please send all comments, suggestions, and subscription requests to engnews@cygnus.com. TABLE OF CONTENTS ----------------- . Q3 Gremlins . Q4 Release . Q5/R1 Coming Up? . PRMS 3.2 . Constant Division Optimization in gcc . libgdb Update . Collaboration with O'Reilly & Associates . Software Maintenance Status . Embedded Systems Conference Report . Customer Forum (Market Communications) . Customer Forum Responses (Logistics) . Hackers Index PRODUCTS AND RELEASES --------------------- 1. Q3 Gremlins While we can build over 60 different platforms from a single set of sources regularly every quarter, our mastery of the duplication process is lagging. Q3 tapes are finally shipping this week. We apologize for the delay and inconvenience. 2. Q4 Release Progress on the Q4 release for year end continues. We expect the release to support the matrix of host-target platforms shown below. s | g i m | r i x 6 | / / u 8 8 | s i h h n 6 k | s s s d 6 r p p m i l l | o u u s 0 i s 3 7 d i v y y | l n n t 0 x c 0 0 o p e n n TARGET\HOST | 2 3 4 n 0 4 o 0 0 s s l x x -----------------+----------------------------------------------- native | N N N N N N N N N N N N a29k-amd-udi | X X X h8300-hms | X O i386-aout | X X O O i386-netware | X i386-lynx | X i960-intel-nindy | X X X X i960-vxworks | X X X X m68k-lynx | x m68k-SPECTRA [*] | X X X X X X X m68k-aout | X X X X X X X X m68k-coff | X X X O m68k-idp | X m68k-vxworks | X X X X m88k-coff | O mips-idt-ecoff | X X X X O sh-hms | X O O sparc-aout | X X sparc-vxworks | X X sparclite-aout | X X X sparclite-coff | O O sparclite-vxworks| O z8k-coff | O Key: N - supported native (no runtime libraries except libg++ for any natives) X - supported cross O - contact Cygnus for availability New matrix additions include HP PA-RISC (HP9000/700) native tools, i[34]86 Netware target support, and Lynx Real Time OS support on the m68k and i[34]86 platforms. These development projects were first mentioned in the June issue of ICE, and we are pleased to make them available as part of Q4. Other new work first mentioned in the June issue and appearing in selected platforms of the Q4 release includes multithread support in gdb, and stabs-in-coff and stabs-in-elf based debugging. 3. Q5/R1 Coming Up? Each of the Cygnus Progressive Releases has a long name and a short name. The long name is in the form of "progressive-yymmdd" where yymmdd is the official date of the release, e.g., Q1 is progressive-930331, Q3 is progressive-930929. More frequently, we use the short name which consists of a letter and a digit. The letter for 1992 is "P"; 1993 is "Q". Although the idea of having a release called "T2" is appealing, this scheme just misses having "Z"-based releases for the Millennium. So we decided to use a more pragmatic approach, namely to use a year and quarter designation for the short name. Instead of Q5 or R1 for the release next spring, it will be named 94Q1, to be followed by 94Q2, 94Q3, etc. 4. PRMS 3.2 We are making a new release of Problem Report Management System (PRMS), our bugs and action request tracking system, for release at the end of the month. A partial list of Version 3.2 improvements include the following: - The local configuration of PRMS can be modified without recompilation. - Database query has been significantly enhanced; searches based on regular expressions are supported. - A new mail server is provided for querying the database remotely. - Emacs 19 support for submitting new Problem Reports, editing existing problem reports, and querying the PR database, is supported. - The documentation has been completely revised. - Many bugs have been fixed. Many of our customers have seen PRMS on the InterNet as "gnats", but may not realize that gnats and PRMS are one and the same package. PRMS originated at, and is maintained by Cygnus; when we contributed it to the GNU project, it was gniven a gnew gname, "gnats". ;) NEW AND ONGOING DEVELOPMENTS ---------------------------- 1. Constant Division Optimization in gcc A constant divide operation can be replaced by a constant multiply operations using 32 by 32 bit input and producing a 64 bit output. The multiply operation is, in turn, replaced by a sequence of shifts, additions, and subtractions on some machines. This can provide significant performance improvements in two cases: 1. There is no integer divide instruction for the specific microprocessor 2. The integer multiply instruction is much faster than the divide instruction. (Many recent microprocessors have much greater improvements in the performance of the multiply instruction relative to that of the divide instruction.) We are in the process of putting this optimization into gcc. The implementation is machine-independent; it is parameterized by data on the relative performance of the two instructions in the machine description file. The following are preliminary results from a small benchmark using many divisions (conversion of a number to a decimal string through repeated division by 10). Optimization Ratio disabled enabled disabled/enabled microsec microsec ---------------------------------------------------------------- MC68020 20MHz 51 46 1.1 MC68040 20MHz 18 15 1.3 IBM RIOS 41.5MHz 6.0 4.2 1.4 SPARC Viking 40MHz 7.1 3.6 2.0 Mips R4000 100MHz 8.3 2.4 3.4 Alpha 21064 133MHz 15 2.7 5.8 2. libgdb Update The design specification of libgdb, the encapsulation of gdb internal functionality independent of the user interface, is nearly complete. Our current plan is to add features to GDB to facilitate the construction of GDB-based debugging servers. These features include multi-band communications, flexible output formatting, application-supplied hooks into breakpoints and GDB commands, and support for asynchronous communication (i.e., while the target is running) with the GDB server. Prototyping began early this month and we expect a first implementation by year end. 3. Collaboration with O'Reilly & Associates Cygnus Support is working with O'Reilly & Associates, publishers of the popular "Nutshell" series of books on Unix software to produce a book giving an overview of the GNU development tools and a companion CD-ROM containing the sources and some binary configurations for these tools. This package will cover the most common GNU development tools and how they fit together. Specific programs include the compiler toolchain, make, emacs, gnats, and the C and C++ libraries, -- for native and cross development use. Both the contents of the CD-ROM and the book will be freely redistributable. SUPPORT ACTIVITIES ------------------- In addition to new development, a significant part of our engineering resources is devoted to answering questions, fixing problems in the GNU software, and providing a range of support services to our customers. 1. Software maintenance status The following table shows the maintenance statistics for the last five weeks. We continue to need your help: please let us know when you agree that a problem has been fixed so that we can move it from a "feedback" state to a "closed" state. # # # # # # Date Open Analzd Fdback Closed Suspnd Total ------------------------------------------------------------ 09/20/93 475 250 606 1,944 145 3,420 10/25/93 495 232 605 2,124 147 3,603 ------------------------------------------------------------ Change +20 -18 -1 +180 +2 +183 OTHER ITEMS ---------- 1. Embedded Systems Conference Report We had an excellent showing at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) in Santa Clara, CA in early October. Sun 4 and DOS hosted tools for AMD29k, Fujitsu SPARClite, Hitachi H8/300, and Motorola 68k target boards were shown in our booth. In addition to a record number of leads, Mark Eichin's talk on "Security Issues in Embedded Networking" was very well received and Mark has been invited back to ESC-East in Boston, MA in April 1994. 2. Customer Forum We value your suggestions, and would like your response to the following questions (to engnews@cygnus.com). We will publish summaries of answers of general interest in a future issue. As exemplified by the Fortune Magazine article mentioned in last month's ICE, Cygnus has been gaining a lot of attention in the press recently. Since Free Software in the commercial world is still in its infancy, we would like to know your views about what we are doing, and how we are doing it, in our communications with the marketplace. 1. Would you benefit if Cygnus were to raise its profile in the market? If so, what actions would you like to see? 2. Have you seen our advertisements in magazines and other publications? Do you think they are effective? 3. What additional information would you like to see about Cygnus in these publications? 3. Customer Forum Responses In the September issue of ICE, we asked you about our software update and contract renewal processes. Software updates: Not surprisingly (see also Hackers Index below), the majority preferred to receive update notices via email, with every respondent in favour of a default option. Other suggestions included earlier notification of the fixes contained in the release, more frequent snapshots, and improvements to the install script. Contract renewal: The responses were fairly evenly split between customers who would prefer to get renewal notices by email and those in favour of US Mail. There was also a split between those who wanted a separate administrative contact to be notified, and those that did not. Most of you preferred 30-60+ days of advance warning for price changes. The other main concern was that the pricing structure was not very clear. Based on your feedback, we will be changing our update request procedure with the Q4 progressive. We are also evaluating improvements to the renewal process for implementation in 1994. 4. Hackers Index Number of ICE readers* on email - 165 Number of ICE readers by US Mail - 37 Size of Cygnus Q3 Development Tools Release - 2.2 million lines of source code exclusive of comments. * mailing lists are counted as single entries --------------------------------------------------------------------- Cygnus Support 1937 Landings Drive One Kendall Square Mountain View, CA 94043 Cambridge, MA 02139 +1 415 903 1400 voice +1 617 494 1040 voice +1 415 903 0122 fax +1 617 494 1325 fax ---------------------------------------------------------------------