Porting Linux Software to the IA64 Platform

axehind writes "In this Byte.com article, Dr Moshe Bar explains some of the differences between IA32 and IA64. He also explains some things to watch out for when porting applications to the IA64 architecture."

Comments

Debian on the IA64

[hereward_Cooper]

Debian is already ported to the IA64 -- not sure about the number of packages ported yet, but I know they intend to release the new 3.0 (woody) with a IA64 port.

See here for more details

Re:Will 64 bit chips ever make it?

[Chris Burke]

It's really not that complicated.

While 4-bit and 8-bit chips were cool and all, no one really thought they were -sufficient-. The limitations of an 8-bit machine hit in you in the face, even if you're coding fairly simple stuff. 16 bits was better but, despite an oft quoted presumption suggesting otherwise, that as well was clearly not going to work for too long.

Then, 32 bits came around. With 32-bit machines, it was natural to work with up to around 4 GB of memory without any crude hacks. Doing arithmetic on fairly large numbers wasn't difficult either. The limitations of the machine were suddenly a lot farther away. Thus it took longer for those limitations to become a problem. You'll notice that for those spaces where 4GB was a limiting factor the switch to 64 bits happened a long time ago. The reason we are hearing so much about 64 bits now is that the "low end" servers that run on the commodity x86 architecture are getting to the point where 4GB isn't enough anymore. Eventually I imagine desktops will want 64 bits as well. I've already got 1.5GB in the workstation I'm typing this on.

When will 128 bit chips come about? I don't know, but I'm sure it will take longer than it will take for 64 bits to become mainstream. The reason is simple: Exponential growth. Super-exponential, in a way. 64 bits isn't twice as big as 32 bits, it's 2^32 times bigger. While 2^32 was quite a bit of ram, 2^64 is really, really huge. I won't say that we'll never need more than 2^64 bytes of memory, but I feel confident it won't be any time soon.

An interesting end to this: At some point, there -is- a maximum bit size. For some generation n with a bit size 2^n and a maximum memory space of 2^2^n you have reached the point where you could use the quantum state of every particle in the universe to store your data, and still have more than enough bits to address it. Though this won't hold true if, say, we discover that there are an infinite number of universes (that we can use to store more data). Heh.