differences between IP32 binaries & IP28 binaries

[dexter1]

There is nothing arch specific about generic IRIX MIPS-binaries , but it is possible that some binaries depend on specific hardware components, like an EISA bus on the R10K Indigo2 (IP28) or VPro graphics on the Octane (IP30) or the VICE multimedia chip in the O2 (IP32).

[robespierre]

IP28 supports a 64-bit kernel, IP32 does not.

[vishnu]

Graphics hardware can make a difference, for example Adobe Premier on IP 30 works fine with SI, SSI and MXI but with VPRO it hangs permanently at launch, before even putting up it's splash screen.

[vishnu]

Alias/Wavefront used to have extensive hardware qualification lists for what their binaries required, they assiduously wanted to avoid people buying their admittedly super expensive software only to find it wouldn't run on their hardware...

[dexter1]

What i forgot to say is that there can also be some implicit target platform optimization performed by MIPSPro compilers. Like:

Code: Select all

    -Ofast [ = ipxx]
                 Selects optimizations that maximize performance for the
                 given SGI target platform, ipxx.  These optimizations may
                 differ between releases of the compiler and among the
                 supported platforms.  They enable the full instruction set
                 of the target platform (for example, -mips4 for an
                 R10000).  Although the optimizations are generally safe,
                 they may affect floating point accuracy due to
                 rearrangement of computations (for examples, see the
                 -OPT:roundoff=3 and -OPT:div_split options in the opt(5)
                 man page).  Typical optimizations include -O3, -IPA,
                 -TARG:platform=ipxx, -n32, and
                 -OPT:Olimit=0:roundoff=3:div_split=ON:alias=typed.  See
                 the -TARG:platform=ipxx option for information about the
                 optional argument.

i haven't come across incompatibilities between machines using these specific options, as the man page states.

But even if the CPU is the same between platforms, there are differences in properties like cache misses: on the Indigo2 and O2 an R10000 support only one cache miss, but the Octane and Origin support up to 4 (Info from Ian's site).

[miod]

(1) things proved to be working on IP32 do not work not on IP28, this, even if I did a copy preserving file's properties.
(
machine1: tar -cf app.tar patch, scp app.tar machine2_IP:
machine2: tar -xf app.tar
)

You won't preserve all file properties if you don't use the `p' option when extracting,