SDL Adds Initial Support For LoongArch

The SDL library that is widely used by cross-platform games as a software/hardware abstraction layer has merged support for the Chinese LoongArch CPU architecture.

It was just this past weekend that LoongArch support landed in Linux 5.19 albeit for this initial kernel release it's not enough to actually yield a working system. Some necessary LoongArch drivers to actually having a booting, functioning system have yet to be mainlined. But getting the CPU architecture code into Linux 5.19 at least clears the way for LoongArch support to be introduced this summer into the GNU C Library.

Meanwhile this week the Simple DirectMedia Library (SDL) has added support for the LoongArch architecture. SDL's LoongArch port includes adding support for optimized LSX and LASX Assembly routines.

This initial ~268 lines of new code for LoongArch SDL support was authored by Hecai Yuan of Loongson who has also worked on LoongArch support for FFmpeg and other open-source software. See these commits for more details on the initial LoongArch CPU support for the SDL library.

The Loongson 3A5000 is the initial LoongArch CPU model in moving past MIPS64.

LoongArch was developed by Loongson now that the MIPS64 upstream architecture they previously relied on is basically dead. LoongArch is "inspired" by MIPS64 and RISC-V. Prior to getting the LoongArch support into Linux 5.19, it was the GCC 12 compiler earlier this year that introduced the initial compiler support.