SPARC is a family of RISC microprocessors designed and marketed by Sun Microsystems, incorporated. They are very widely found in Sun workstations and clones. Say yes to build a 64-bit kernel - formerly known as sparc64 Say no to build a 32-bit kernel - formerly known as sparc
Generic GPIO API support
This enables support for systems with more than one CPU. If you have a system with only one CPU, say N. If you have a system with more than one CPU, say Y. If you say N here, the kernel will run on single and multiprocessor machines, but will use only one CPU of a multiprocessor machine. If you say Y here, the kernel will run on many, but not all, singleprocessor machines. On a singleprocessor machine, the kernel will run faster if you say N here. People using multiprocessor machines who say Y here should also say Y to "Enhanced Real Time Clock Support", below. The "Advanced Power Management" code will be disabled if you say Y here. See also <file:Documentation/nmi_watchdog.txt> and the SMP-HOWTO available at <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>. If you don't know what to do here, say N.
Sparc32 does not have a CAS instruction like sparc64. cmpxchg() is emulated, and therefore it is not completely atomic.
This lets you select the page size of the kernel. 8KB and 64KB work quite well, since SPARC ELF sections provide for up to 64KB alignment. If you don't know what to do, choose 8KB.
This kernel feature is useful for number crunching applications that may need to compute untrusted bytecode during their execution. By using pipes or other transports made available to the process as file descriptors supporting the read/write syscalls, it's possible to isolate those applications in their own address space using seccomp. Once seccomp is enabled via /proc/<pid>/seccomp, it cannot be disabled and the task is only allowed to execute a few safe syscalls defined by each seccomp mode. If unsure, say Y. Only embedded should say N here.
Say Y here to experiment with turning CPUs off and on. CPUs can be controlled through /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu#. Say N if you want to disable CPU hotplug.
This adds the CPUFreq driver for UltraSPARC-III processors. For details, take a look at <file:Documentation/cpu-freq>. If in doubt, say N.
This adds the CPUFreq driver for UltraSPARC-IIe processors. For details, take a look at <file:Documentation/cpu-freq>. If in doubt, say N.
This adds a driver for the UltraSPARC-III memory controller. Loading this driver allows exact mnemonic strings to be printed in the event of a memory error, so that the faulty DIMM on the motherboard can be matched to the error. If in doubt, say Y, as this information can be very useful.
SMT scheduler support improves the CPU scheduler's decision making when dealing with SPARC cpus at a cost of slightly increased overhead in some places. If unsure say N here.
Multi-core scheduler support improves the CPU scheduler's decision making when dealing with multi-core CPU chips at a cost of slightly increased overhead in some places. If unsure say N here.
Say Y here if you want to be able to pass default arguments to the kernel. This will be overridden by the bootloader, if you use one (such as SILO). This is most useful if you want to boot a kernel from TFTP, and want default options to be available with having them passed on the command line. NOTE: This option WILL override the PROM bootargs setting!
Enable power management and CPU standby features on supported SPARC platforms.
This driver toggles the front-panel LED on sun4m systems in a user-specifiable manner. Its state can be probed by reading /proc/led and its blinking mode can be changed via writes to /proc/led
If you say Y here, it will be possible to use a serial port as the system console (the system console is the device which receives all kernel messages and warnings and which allows logins in single user mode). This could be useful if some terminal or printer is connected to that serial port. Even if you say Y here, the currently visible virtual console (/dev/tty0) will still be used as the system console by default, but you can alter that using a kernel command line option such as "console=ttyS1". (Try "man bootparam" or see the documentation of your boot loader (silo) about how to pass options to the kernel at boot time.) If you don't have a graphics card installed and you say Y here, the kernel will automatically use the first serial line, /dev/ttyS0, as system console. If unsure, say N.
If you say Y here if you are running on a SPARC-LEON processor. The LEON processor is a synthesizable VHDL model of the SPARC-v8 standard. LEON is part of the GRLIB collection of IP cores that are distributed under GPL. GRLIB can be downloaded from www.gaisler.com. You can download a sparc-linux cross-compilation toolchain at www.gaisler.com.
Say Y here is you want to support virtual devices via Logical Domains.
Find out whether your system includes a PCI bus. PCI is the name of a bus system, i.e. the way the CPU talks to the other stuff inside your box. If you say Y here, the kernel will include drivers and infrastructure code to support PCI bus devices. CONFIG_PCI is needed for all JavaStation's (including MrCoffee), CP-1200, JavaEngine-1, Corona, Red October, and Serengeti SGSC. All of these platforms are extremely obscure, so say N if unsure.
If you say Y, the OpenPROM device tree will be available as a virtual file system, which you can mount to /proc/openprom by "mount -t openpromfs none /proc/openprom". To compile the /proc/openprom support as a module, choose M here: the module will be called openpromfs. Only choose N if you know in advance that you will not need to modify OpenPROM settings on the running system.