3

I need to get a big endian platform to develop with gcc and g++, what is a solution for that? I know that the SPARC is one of those big endian architectures, but I have no idea what OSs can run on it and how to emulate a SPARC machine under Linux; I also should note that I need any big endian that I can emulate on an X86 but with g++ available on it.

Anthon
  • 78,313
  • 42
  • 165
  • 222
user2384250
  • 471
  • 1
  • 5
  • 8

3 Answers3

4

Why Sparc specifically? ARM or MIPS is easier to emulate or to get in hardware, both are bi-endian, and both are supported by Linux in either endianness.

There doesn't seem to be a well-maintained ARM big-endian port, your best bet for ARM seems to be the old Debian NSLU2 port. For MIPS you have the MIPS port.

QEMU can emulate all of these CPUs.

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
  • 807,993
  • 194
  • 1,674
  • 2,175
  • there is nothing special about the SPARC, it's just the first big endian architecture that came to my mind. the problem with ARM and MIPS is that I couldn't find a good OS, I'm trying that debian mips. – user2384250 May 31 '13 at 06:47
3

I think QEMU can emulate Sparc under Linux. Also you can use Debian as guest os, because sparc is one of its supported platforms. There is guide here .

IBr
  • 1,745
  • 3
  • 17
  • 26
  • any other big endian platform that is available for virtualization ? – user2384250 May 30 '13 at 20:02
  • I suggest you to look at debian ports table to see, what architectures it does support and what architectures are big and little endian: http://www.debian.org/ports/ . ARM and MIPS are another feasible emulation targets, while both are really bi-endian, OS packages and compilers try to stick to one endianess. – IBr May 30 '13 at 20:10
2

As an aside, maybe it would be easier for you to simply get a SPARC or HPPA from ebay, they're cheap nowadays. Both are supported by Linux and BSDs and do a wonderful job. HPPAs (select models) are biendian, maybe that'll help you more.

schaiba
  • 7,493
  • 1
  • 33
  • 31