Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

FreeBSD Boots on x86-64

Posted by michael on from the future-is-now dept.

craig2787 writes "FreeBSD developer Peter Wemm has successfully booted FreeBSD on a real AMD ClawHammer CPU, in both 64- and 32-bit modes. Original posting to the -current mailing list is here."

3 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Em-Hache-Zed by shlong · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, though, I'd eventually like to see some real world performance specs of Hammer running in 32 bit mode [...]

    Benchmarks will come in time. Right now everyone that has a Hammer system is under NDA from AMD. Think about it, if everyone was posting performance numbers months before Hammer was ready for introduction, that would give Intel plenty of time to come up with some sort of response. When April 23 comes and the chip is officially released, I suspect that a ton of performance numbers will be released within a few seconds.

    As for the 32-bit-on-64-bit problem, remember that the amd64 architecture is just an extension on ia32, much like ia32 was an extension of the 16-bit stuff. Code either uses the wider registers or it doesn't. The real fear is that 64-bit code won't perform as fast as 32-bit code, since 64-bit pointers/integers/etc means less efficient cache usage.

    --
    Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
  2. Great News by vga_init · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Even though they say that BSD is a dying operating system, I've had the pleasure of being able to use it quite often in the past, and it really is a fine operating system.

    You've definitely got to hand it to BSD; it seems to be able boot on just about anything. One look at NetBSD's home page makes this obvious. :)

    This added compatability is not only good news for BSD users, but also for the whole open source community, which doesn't seem to have any trouble keeping up with new technology.

  3. FreeBSD / NetBSD by edhall · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Btw, NetBSD has had x86-64 some time back. Free is just catching up, it seems.

    FreeBSD has focused on Itanium up until now, given that production hardware has been available for a while. There are people who already have them in their datacenters and who want to run FreeBSD on them. It's part of the pragmatism that is at the base of FreeBSD's philosophy.

    NetBSD has more of a research-focused, "climb the mountain because it's there" philosophy. Compare mottos: "FreeBSD -- The Power To Serve" vs. "Of Course It Runs NetBSD." That's not to say NetBSD doesn't make a fine, practical embedded platform (say), or that FreeBSD is useless in research (especially when that research can result in improved performance in the datacenter, FreeBSD's home turf). It's just a difference in emphasis, and the BSD community is richer for it.

    -Ed