5. Sparc architecture specific questions

5.1 Which Sparc machines are supported ?

Quoting the UltraLinux web page (only SMP systems):

• UltraSPARC PCI based workstations: Ultra60, Ultra450
• UltraSPARC SBUS based servers: Enterprise 1, 2, 150
• UltraSPARC SBUS based large servers: Enterprise 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000, 10000
• UltraSPARC PCI based servers: Enterprise 250, 450
• SPARC sun4m SMP machines (Anton Blanchard)
• Starfire E10000

UltraLinux has ran on a 14 CPUs machine (see the dmesg output) and on a Starfire E10000 with 24 CPUs (see the dmesg output).

5.2 Specific problem related to Sparc SMP support

(David Miller) There should not be any worries.

The only known problem, and one we don't intend to fix, is that if you build an SMP kernel for 32-bit (ie. non-ultrasparc) systems, this kernel will not work on sun4c systems.

5.3 SMP specific limit with current kernel (2.2)

(David Miller) There is a bug in the include/linux/tasks.h header file, it needs to define NR_CPUS to 64 on UltraSparc as this is the upper limit for the hardware we support :-)