Andes NDS32 CPU Architecture To Be Dropped In Linux 5.18

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Andes NDS32 CPU Architecture To Be Dropped In Linux 5.18

It was just back in 2018 that Andes' NDS32 CPU architecture support was added with the Linux 4.17 kernel. But now with Linux 5.18 the AndesCore NDS32 architecture is being removed over lack of active maintenance...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Andes-Tech-NDS32-Removal

[uid313]

Nice that Andes Technology have abandoned their custom legacy architecture and adopted the new, modern, open standard RISC-V architecture! 👍

[uid313]

Great, so now lets drop alpha (DEC Alpha), csky (C-SKY), frv (Fujitsu FR-V), parisc (PA-RISC), ia64 (Itanium), and sh (SuperH) next!

[CochainComplex]

Might be a noob question. But what is the classic usecase for this arch?

[squash]

Great, so now lets drop alpha (DEC Alpha), csky (C-SKY), frv (Fujitsu FR-V), parisc (PA-RISC), ia64 (Itanium), and sh (SuperH) next!

The criteria wasn't being old, it was a lack of developers maintaining the port.

[squash]

Might be a noob question. But what is the classic usecase for this arch?

Andes NDS32 was a design for small/low power devices, roughly comparable to embedded ARM (think STM32). About as small as you could go and still run linux, much smaller (think esp32) you'd be choosing between freertos or bare metal. Tough market to be in with a new architecture.

[Space Heater]

The criteria wasn't being old, it was a lack of developers maintaining the port.

Not to mention the Linux team at Andes openly saying that they no longer work on nds32 at all and are fine with it being dropped.

All of our nds32 customers maintain their own kernel derived from previous LTS versions. Also, we (as the Linux team in Andes) now dedicate our whole effort to RISC-V, so there is no longer need to maintain arch/nds32.

[uid313]

The criteria wasn't being old, it was a lack of developers maintaining the port.

But probably nobody uses or should be using those legacy architectures, so might as well remove them.

[squash]

But probably nobody uses or should be using those legacy architectures, so might as well remove them.

That's just your opinion, the opinions of people who use and maintain those ports are different. I'm sure you can see why they don't take yours into account.