We have added three new x86_64 virtual machines based on a dual AMD EPYC 7773X system with plenty of CPU cores. Each VM has 128 logical cores + 64 GB of memory and runs a different OS:

cfarm420 runs Arch Linux

cfarm421 runs Debian 13 trixie

cfarm422 runs Debian 12 bookworm

This addition to the farm should provide good build times for highly parallel workloads, and will provide low latency for users in Asia.

The virtual machines are located in Tokyo, Japan. Thanks to Jing Luo for providing the hardware, hosting and support!

TL;DR: on cfarm23, your old home data is in /oldhome, please copy anything useful before it becomes unavailable.

Our smaller hosts usually can't have a local disk, so in that case we provide home directories over NFS from a bigger server.

This has been the case for cfarm23, one of our EdgeRouter host. Unfortunately, due to hardware constraints, we have to change the disk backing its home directory and we cannot migrate the data.

As a result, cfarm23 now has a brand new empty home directory, mounted over NFS from a new server. We still provide the old home mounted on /oldhome, but cannot make any promise about how long this old data will stay available. Please copy any useful data from the old home before it becomes permanently unavailable.

Additionally, cfarm91, our RISC-V VisionFive1 host, now also uses a NFS home instead of the local SD card. This should speed up builds significantly, although the CPU cores remain quite slow. In that case, we were able to copy the data over, which means that no action is required.

We are happy to announce the latest addition to the farm, a POWER9 Blackbird system from Raptor Computing Systems. This new host is located in Toulouse, France, and runs Debian bookworm in little-endian mode.

With 8 cores and 32 threads, it is a smaller system compared to cfarm135, but should still provide appreciably fast build times on a POWER architecture.

It is available to all farm users over SSH on cfarm29.cfarm.net. It has actually been available for some weeks already, but we wanted to add a bigger disk before announcing it.

Many thanks to the dedicated developer who donated the hardware, and to tetaneutral.net for hosting it!

The transition to our new cfarm.net domain is complete. All machines are now referred to as cfarmXX, or cfarmXX.cfarm.net. The old naming convention and domain (gccXX and gccXX.fsffrance.org) are obsolete and should not be used.

The website formerly at cfarm.tetaneutral.net is now available (with redirects) at portal.cfarm.net, and a new landing page for the project, complete with documentation, will soon be available directly at cfarm.net. This is still in progress.

DNS records for fsffrance.org will no longer be updated, and new machines will only be added under the cfarm.net domain.

The Compile Farm project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of cfarm240, an Arm Morello SoC prototype board running CheriBSD (a FreeBSD derivative).

This system-on-chip research platform features a custom quad-core aarch64 Neoverse N1-based CPU implementing CHERI (a memory protection model), and has 32GB system memory. Disk space is limited (~200GB); please be mindful of your resource usage.

We are still in the process of transitioning to our new domain name and website; please SSH to cfarm240.cfarm.net.

Notes:

  • Morello boards are the only physical implementation of this ISA; lessons learned will be carried to future Arm extensions, so binary compatibility with Morello is not guaranteed.
  • You will want to read about packages.
  • If you need help with CHERI-specific problems (not Compile Farm issues), consider joining their Slack.

Thank you to the University of Cambridge for hosting (and developing) this machine!

POWER10 machine

2023-06-23

We now have a POWER10 machine in the Compile Farm: gcc120.

It is donated by IBM, and hosted at OSUOSL like most Power machines.  Thanks!

It is an IBM E1050, 192 hardware threads, 2TB RAM, 11TB disk.  It runs AlmaLinux, a RHEL descendant / clone.

It is open for general use immediately.  Enjoy, but use it responsibly: most importantly, always be aware other people want to use it as well :-)

GCC bootstrap takes 26m, and testsuite takes 6m.  With --enable-languages=all.  But Ada and D did not actually build, I'll work on getting some working pre-built compilers for those installed in /opt/cfarm for that, which you can use to build new compilers with.

Thanks to everyone involved for making this reality at long last!

The Compile Farm project is happy to announce two new sparc64 LDOMs, each with 32 dedicated threads, 32GB memory, and 1.5TB of disk. They are hosted on a SPARC T4-2 server.

One runs Debian on Linux 6.3, and the other runs Oracle Solaris 11.4.

The Linux system, cfarm105, replaces gcc102 (a SPARC T3-2* that suffered from irreparable hardware problems and is being removed from its data center today). All user accounts and data have been migrated.

The Solaris system, cfarm106, is the Farm's first Solaris 11.4 machine and we hope it will prove interesting and useful. It has been set up with a substantial number of Oracle-provided developer tools, including Rust 1.61, LLVM 14, and GCC 12. The OpenCSW package manager has been installed as well.

We are in the process of transitioning to our own domain name, cfarm.net, online now at:

  • ssh -p 2202 cfarm105.cfarm.net (Linux)
  • ssh -p 2203 cfarm106.cfarm.net (Solaris)

An announcement with details about our new domain, website, and other project-related matters will be made soon. Please consider switching to cfarmNNN.cfarm.net from gccNNN.fsffrance.org for all machines as soon as possible. The "old" subdomains will continue to work but may not be updated.

These sparc64 systems are donated, hosted, and managed by Adélie Linux.
Thanks to ylibc.org for hosting gcc102 for the last 3 years.

* Compared to the T3 (in-order execution), the T4 (out-of-order) has much better single-threaded performance.

Software in the Public Interest (SPI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation registered in the state of New York founded to act as a fiscal sponsor for organizations that develop open source software and hardware.

Compile Farm has been accepted as an SPI Associated Project.

This does not bind Compile Farm to SPI in any way. It means that SPI will accept donations, hold assets, and provide legal assistance on our behalf. SPI can also sign contracts for us.

Fundraising is an important function of any major project, and having the ability to do so transparently and legitimately means we can more easily acquire new hardware, repair existing hardware, and hire contractors should the need arise.

We're looking into similar arrangements with European charities.

We have a new Apple M1 machine running macOS, gcc104. It should provide the same kind of services as gcc304 (which is no longer available). Disk space is limited, so please be mindful and clean up your working trees when you no longer need them.

Many additional software are installed through homebrew. However, they are not enabled by default because they may conflict with native macOS tools. To use them, either run the custom homebrew command to update your $PATH, or use binaries directly from /opt/homebrew/bin/.

Many thanks to Adélie Linux for providing and hosting this new machine!

gcc13 and gcc14 will be replaced with new hardware on October 9th. Starting from this date, the DNS names for gcc13 and gcc14 will be changed to point to the new machines.

Data will not be copied over to the new machines. Please backup any important data you have on the old machines.

gcc14 will remain available for a limited amount of time after the change, and will still be reachable under its IP address (195.54.62.93)

gcc13 experienced a disk failure some time ago and is not currently reachable, but some of its data was copied to gcc14 under /home/gcc13/. It was unfortunately not possible to recover all data from gcc13.

Thanks a lot to Smile for hosting these machines for many years and for their continuing support!