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Red Hat Reveals Support For AMD's Hammer

Posted by Hemos on from the support-the-new dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "Red Hat had been rumored to be working on support AMD's Hammer architecture, and now they have made it official. Now if I can get a hold of one of these my little site will finally be able to handle a good slashdotting with 16GB of DDR333! 'Red Hat will provide native 64-bit support for processors based on AMD's x86-64 technology, while providing support for existing 32-bit Linux-based applications.'" Combine this with Linus' feelings and Hammer is looking better and better.

9 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. what does linux have to do with this? by GutBomb · · Score: 2, Informative

    Linus wants hammer to get popular so intel gets off thier asses. he was not talking about widespread adoption of hammer within the linux kernal. he was talking about hammer paving the way for other 64 but processors.

  2. Linus's hammer support?! by NicolaiBSD · · Score: 5, Informative

    Doh! Linus doesn't have warm fuzzy feelings towards the Hammer, or rather he's never expressed them. The poster is referring to a post on LKML on paging issues with Itanium.
    Linus didn't endorse one platform or the other, he only explained that if Hammer was to become dominant instead of Itanium, it would save the kernel developers problems solving the Itanium paging problems.

    1. Re:Linus's hammer support?! by cperciva · · Score: 5, Informative

      Linus didn't endorse one platform or the other, he only explained that if Hammer was to become dominant instead of Itanium, it would save the kernel developers problems solving the Itanium paging problems.

      I think you mean linux's paging problems. Specifically, the fact that gcc being broken means that linux uses 32 bits for fields which should be 64 bits.

      --
      Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
  3. SuSE's work on supporting the Hammer by Roger+Whittaker · · Score: 5, Informative

    Press releases detailing SuSE's work on Linux for the Hammer can be found here (20th March 2002), here (28th February 2002) and here (31st January 2001).

    Roger Whittaker (SuSE Linux Ltd)

  4. Re:Now... by mr_z_beeblebrox · · Score: 2, Informative

    Will they put an effort into coding it (the compiler in this case), or will they wait for the lusers to finish coding it and then take the credit?
    Seriously, is Redhat good about this?

    Redhat was one of the first corporations as far as I know to subsidizing kernel development, ie....Alan Cox was collecting a check for his efforts. Red Hat is a very productive member of the open source community IMHO.

  5. It only took 10 years :) by jukal · · Score: 3, Informative

    Remember this, year 1992?
    "Digital Equipment unveils the 150-MHz Alpha 21064 64-bit microprocessor". That was kind of one checkpoint, this year, I believe might be another.

  6. it's all about volume by doodleboy · · Score: 2, Informative
    Why go with a relatively untested IA-64 arch when i could go with a Sun, IBM, or SGI box who have all been 64bit for years and have no x86 baggage at all? I'm certanly not saving any money going with Intel's chip plus the other 64bit architectures have much more software support in compairason to IA-64.

    We all know that 64bit is going to replace 32bit. AMD and Intel are important because huge volumes and low costs are what will finally make 64bit machines ubiquitous, i.e. aunt Edna will be able to buy one at Walmart for a couple of hundred bucks. Like it or not one of these architectures will be the "new x86" and nearly all software will be written for it, displacing 32bit machines as well as all the 64bit niche architectures on the market now.

    As for Sparc, Alpha, etc. being "better": Since when was the best solution guaranteed victory?
  7. MandrakeSoft as well by joestar · · Score: 3, Informative

    According to a recent press-release, MandrakeSoft has also worked with AMD to get Hammer supported on early 2003.

    The joint Press release (MandrakeSoft/AMD- June 27th) is available here.

  8. Why should we support AMD again? by vandan · · Score: 3, Informative
    AMD have already stated their intention to make Palladium-ready chips.
    Here's what AMD is really thinking ...
    We'll take advantage of Linux Losers' programming ability now (We could sure use all the help we can get there). And then we'll turn around and dictate the conditions under which these 'customers' can use their computers and provide a big-brother service to keep the ol' boys in the white house happy. It makes no difference to us that Palladium will destroy Linux and Open Source software. There's more money in it for us if they have to upgrade every 18 months to an ever-more-inefficient Microsoft Piece of Shit.

    Come on, people, really. Don't support AMD. They are not the noble David against the nasty Goliath. They are just as much a nasty Goliath themself, except for the fact that they don't have much market share... But they sure are acting like they do. If AMD and Intel keep pushing their 'Trusted Computing' wheelbarrow, I swear I will buy an underpowered Transmetta or even a fucking Macintosh just to avoid Palladium.