PowerPC and AIX support

[bencz]

After some research, I checked that the .net core has no supported for PowerPC or AIX ... Are there plans to implement support for the Power architecture and the AIX operating system?

[afxgroup]

Ok.. but why is it impossible to port .NET to PPC32BE? It is so hard?

[bencz]

Ok.. but why is it impossible to port .NET to PPC32BE? It is so hard?

I believe it is a problem of interests, IBM has already "killed" the Power64 B.E, the 32-bit version, IBM has buried it a long time ago and has even "decomposed"....

[afxgroup]

But there are some different alive PPC BE platforms in the world. Not only IBM. I don't know the effort to implement the changes to see the big endian version alive but if someone points the main files to change we can give it a try. And even Mono is working on PPC32

[bkeys]

Please avoid using non-standard nomenclature

Yeah, it was a bit irony "Please avoid using non-standard nomenclature" and then using the wrong nomenclature :-D

You guys are terrible at this. It's ppc64el, mips64el, armel...

Not terrible, but I'll give you that both are accepted. In the IBM Power world LE is the most common expression though (as in Little Endian and not Endian Little (?) https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/just-faqs-about-little-endian "by Jeff Scheel, IBM Linux on Power Chief Engineer As promised, here is my first blog post on little endian or "LE" as we call it."

But let's focus on the cool thing, .NET IS COMING TO POWER!!

@tappehl Could you expound on the last part of this post? Is there any efforts on the part of IBM to get .NET working on ppc64le?

[tappehl]

Yes @bkeys as you can see above, Sapana is involved in the project... It was ported to IBM Mainframe last year, and I did some magic behind the scenes when I heard Power was not involve in that project. Now there is another project going on :)

[bkeys]

@tappehl is there a loose timeline/broad estimate you think it will take until we have initial .NET support for POWER? I looked at the pull requests and it's really good news.

[tappehl]

@tappehl is there a loose timeline/broad estimate you think it will take until we have initial .NET support for POWER? I looked at the pull requests and it's really good news.

I cannot tell, but for s390 it was released with the last version of .NET..

[kevincrans]

Some years ago NXP was still creating powerpc, but I don't know if they still make them and the 68k based coldfire, they indirectly bought a piece Motorola from the AIM: Apple IBM Motorola alliance, if u didn't know.

[kevincrans]

I learned more, NXP stopped support (I like this Philips related company, but disappointing), meaning our hope lays with libre-soc and IBM. I do have to say, I like AIX support, but since macOS is already supported, only the arch has to be ported first.

[tappehl]

We also want to run our Core Banking Application on Power PC Processors PPC64LE. May I know from .net core team is this on your roadmap? When this will be possible?

Please reach out to me at torbjorn.appehl@ibm.com or torbjorn@builtonpower.com

[janani66]

Enablement for ppc64le is in the upstream .NET7 and .NET8 ( main ) branches -- this is for the mono runtime engine and not CoreCLR. Testing continues. CI/CD pipelines are being run on ppc64le machines too.

[bkeys]

Enablement for ppc64le is in the upstream .NET7 and .NET8 ( main ) branches -- this is for the mono runtime engine and not CoreCLR. Testing continues. CI/CD pipelines are being run on ppc64le machines too.

That is great news! But mono has been available in the Fedora repositories for some time now with ppc64le architecture: https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/rpminfo?rpmID=25347685 I know mono joined the .net foundation but can you explain to those less informed such as myself what this means for ppc64le users? Is there plans to have ppc64le in the coreclr at some point?

[janani66]

The current work is to get the mono engine in .NET7 working on ppc64le. CoreCLR will be targeted after the current .NET7 enablement for ppc64le is complete.

[bencz]

Now that IBM has released .net core 7, with support for ppc64le, how to install it on an Ubuntu or Debian server?

[Sapana-Khemkar]

Now that IBM has released .net core 7, with support for ppc64le, how to install it on an Ubuntu or Debian server?

We have to cross build tarball on Ubuntu 18.04/20.04 x86. I am working on blog for the same. I will link once it is published.

[lehrbua]

Now that IBM has released .net core 7, with support for ppc64le, how to install it on an Ubuntu or Debian server?

What about AIX ?

[bkeys]

Now that IBM has released .net core 7, with support for ppc64le, how to install it on an Ubuntu or Debian server?

Where does it say that .NET has ppc64le support?

[nealef]

Now that IBM has released .net core 7, with support for ppc64le, how to install it on an Ubuntu or Debian server?

Where does it say that .NET has ppc64le support?

https://www.itjungle.com/2022/11/09/ibm-and-microsoft-bring-net-to-power-after-all/

[janani66]

Enablement for ppc64le is in the upstream .NET7 and .NET8 ( main ) branches -- this is for the mono runtime engine and not CoreCLR. Testing continues. CI/CD pipelines are being run on ppc64le machines too.

That is great news! But mono has been available in the Fedora repositories for some time now with ppc64le architecture: https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/rpminfo?rpmID=25347685 I know mono joined the .net foundation but can you explain to those less informed such as myself what this means for ppc64le users? Is there plans to have ppc64le in the coreclr at some point?

Differences between the previous available mono and the .NET7 based mono on ppc64le are explained by this post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/whats-difference-net-7-mono-paul-chapman/

[Sapana-Khemkar]

Blog on how to cross compile .NET7 for ppc64le https://community.ibm.com/community/user/powerdeveloper/blogs/sapana-khemkar/2023/01/13/cross-build-dotnet7-on-x86-ibm-power

[neosaldina]

Well, looks nice!! This port is for ppc64le...

How complex would it be to make it compatible with ppc64?