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FreeBSD Support for AMD64 On the Way

Posted by michael on from the if-i-had-a-hammer dept.

BSD Forums writes "FreeBSD operating system is making progress towards support for several 64bit platforms. FreeBSD 5.0 introduced SPARC64 and IA64 (Itanium) to its list of platforms and AMD64 is likely to be added in version 5.2."

8 of 22 comments (clear)

  1. Re:correction by JDizzy · · Score: 1

    Woops! wrong article!

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  2. And when BSD gets it... by Odinson · · Score: 1
    OOh ohhh That means 64 windows is comming soon too.

    ;p

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  3. Re:correction by cpeterso · · Score: 1


    I believe Mac OS X borrows from NetBSD's userland programs, not FreeBSD. Ironically, Mac OS X borrows from FreeBSD code for the Mach kernel's BSD "server".

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    cpeterso
  4. Re:correction by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As far as I know OS X is based on NEXT, and a bit of FreeBSD userland (It depends who you ask).

    Darwin (the underpinnings of MacOS X) is based on a Mach MicroKernel kinda semi-bound to a BSD "server" in kernel space. Mach handles the low level hardware, the BSD server handles the other normal interactions you'd expect from a Unix.

    The BSD server is actually ahybrid. From what I remember, they started off as more NetBSDish, then got more and more FreeBSDish. They seem to be tracking FreeBSD more and more now. I'm not sure what the userland is.

    On top of that, you're allowed to have other "servers" as they're called in MicroKernel land. There's a Classic server which is all MacOS 9 and under. The NeXT part is the Cocoa server. And there's obviously Carbon which is essentially for "native" MacOS X apps.

  5. Re:correction correction by The+Ego · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No, Mac OS X does _not_ allow for multiple servers in the Mach 3 sense.

    Darwin is a monolithic kernel where BSD is wedded to the Mach services (bound, not semi-bound). Cocoa and Carbon are purely user-space entities. Classic does have some support in the kernel but it is _not_ a server in the Mach sense, and it is also mostly a user-space thing.

    From following the Darwin mailing lists, you seem quite correct regarding the BSD lineage. Early MacOS X builds had more of a NetBSD lineage and that shifted to FreeBSD over time. Userland is closest to FreeBSD IIRC.

    Hopefully this post won't require a correction^3.

  6. NetBSD is already there; FreeBSD won't take long by Brett+Glass · · Score: 2, Informative

    All of the brouhaha over Linux seems to have overshadowed the fact that it was actually NetBSD that was the first UNIX-like operating system to boot on the AMD64 architecture (under simulation, several years ago, long before there was silicon). If FreeBSD and OpenBSD leverage this work, they won't be far behind. (OpenBSD has diverged from NetBSD, but not so much that they can't bring in the architecture-dependent stuff from NetBSD very quickly if they want to.)

  7. Re:correction by JDizzy · · Score: 1

    That interesting hwo you use the word "server" very loosly. Are you talking about a proccess in the user-land, or a kenel function? I'm a bit unclear when you went into the NEXT being a coccoa server, or something like that. Thanks in advance. =)

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  8. Re:Whoa by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1
    I'm sure both users will be happy to know this.

    I don't think either of the Itanium users care much about FreeBSD...

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