<story><title>Illumos to drop SPARC Support</title><url>https://github.com/illumos/ipd/blob/master/ipd/0019/README.md</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ahl</author><text>I have a uniquely soft spot for SPARC, having written and disassembled a bunch of SPARC early in my career. If this is its swan song, I&amp;#x27;ll take the moment to share some code the takes advantage of the odd (today) delay slot architecture to implement instruction picking:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;illumos&amp;#x2F;illumos-gate&amp;#x2F;blob&amp;#x2F;master&amp;#x2F;usr&amp;#x2F;src&amp;#x2F;uts&amp;#x2F;sparc&amp;#x2F;dtrace&amp;#x2F;dtrace_asm.s#L430&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;illumos&amp;#x2F;illumos-gate&amp;#x2F;blob&amp;#x2F;master&amp;#x2F;usr&amp;#x2F;src&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The trick uses a branch in the delay slot of a jmp--a decidedly unusual construction. At the time I found this to be extremely clever and elegant... but apparently not so clever as to warrant a comment.</text></comment>
<story><title>Illumos to drop SPARC Support</title><url>https://github.com/illumos/ipd/blob/master/ipd/0019/README.md</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>wicket</author><text>With Linux having caught up with key Solaris features in recent years (DTrace -&amp;gt; eBPF, Zones -&amp;gt; Namespaces, ZFS -&amp;gt; ZFS on Linux), I always thought that the main reason to use Illumos would be first-class SPARC support.  With that now dropped, I&amp;#x27;m concerned that Illumos soon become irrelevant.  Are there any compelling reasons left to use Illumos, other than being something for those who just want a free Solaris alternative?</text></comment>