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The PowerUP system software offers mainly three interfaces, the HAL (Hardware
Abstraction Layer), the ABI (Application Binary Interface) and the API (Application
Programming Interface). The HAL is by definition always hardware dependant.
It is a low level software provided by the hardware manufacturer, which
communicates directly with the hardware. To obtain optimal performance and
to utilize all hardware features, complete knowledge of the underlying hardware
is necessary. This is fact for our current hardware as well as any other
processor hardware which will be developed in future.
The ABI is the next layer of system software which uses the HAL as basics.
It can be seen as the "physical" definition of the interface.
This means, the ABI is responsible for correct implementation of register
layouts for system calls. Different kinds of hardware using a compatible
HAL may use the same ABI. Our proposed ABI is compliant to the standard
PowerPC EABI from Motorol, which defines platform independant register layouts
and calling conventions. By use of standard Motorola PowerPC-EABI for our
HAL it is possible to use different platforms and software development systems
apart from the Amiga as well as standard software libraries for PowerPC
based systems, such as e.g. the LIBMOTO library developed by Motorola for
MkLinux which speeds up floating point calculations significantly, which
is only possible because of the built-in compatibility to EABI in our HAL
(this LIBMOTO library for example is included by default on the CDROM delivered
with the PowerUP boards).
The API (Application Programmer Interface) is based on the ABI and is
the logical interface definition for applications, which is mainly the definition
of library calls of the PowerUP system software.
The functionality and conventions are documented by the developer notes
included in the PowerUP package or available from phase 5 and will be uniform
for all products of the PowerUP family. Future enhancements and additions
to the functionality will be compatible to the current implementation of
the system libraries. Even main changes to the hardware, like e.g. cluster
based multiprocessing systems, will not require applications using our API
to be adapted and make them take advantage of new capabilities. Therefore
an application, which is compatible to our PowerUP system software and its
API and ABI, is prepared to be fully compatible to various hardware solutions,
even if provided by different vendors. Third party vendors can implement
full compatibility regardles of the individual functionality of the underlying
hardware. Concerning this matter, please also regard to our guidelines to PowerUP programming styles.
Summing up it can be said that the conceptual design of our PowerUP system
software fulfills all requirements to implement a standardized software
interface for any kind of processor hardware (including multiprocessing
systems) and offers an optimal hardware independency. The options offered
by our solution are in addition based on well introduced standards, what
results in various benefits for users and developers from the beginning
(as demonstrated by the LIBMOTO example above).
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