Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Gentoo/PPC64 Beta Live CDs Released

Posted by timothy on from the lest-your-hardware-go-unemployed dept.

pvdabeel writes "Gentoo/PPC developer, IBM employee and former PPC64 kernel maintainer Tom Gall has announced beta-level live CDs and stages for ppc64. The hardware supported by gentoo-ppc64 is PowerMacintosh G5, IBM pSeries, older IBM 64 bit RS/6000s (such as the model 260, 270, F80, H80, see linuxppc64.org for a complete list) and soon IBM iSeries hardware. Gentoo-ppc64 is the other side of the ppc equation, it is a 64-bit kernel as well as a 64 bit user space. We are the first linux distribution to offer a 64-bit top-to-bottom solution which is not a toy environment. This is a significant and exciting step as there is interest in cluster computing circles, users of java, and more generally those who have needs of large address spaces. It's fairly exciting to be on the forefront and continue to push the capabilities of linux on ppc64 forward."

3 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Re:NOT the first full 64 bit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    Why do you need the OS to be "64 bit native"? Fundamentally, all you really need is for the memory APIs to support the full 64 bit addressing mode; the ABIs to support the 64 bit registers; and not much more that I can think of offhand (feel free to correct me).

    User-space utilities don't need to be 64 bit native. In fact, taking Solaris as an example, there's a lot of utilities that are 32 bit apps. Why? They're faster that way. If you only need to manipulate 32 bit numbers, compiling them in 64 bit mode means moving twice as much data as you need to, be it for pointers, integers, or similar.

    It's a different story on x86. There, you have a paucity of general purpose registers; because the 64 bit platform brings additional registers to the table, you gain by compiling in 64 bit mode in order to be able to access those registers. That's the only reason, though. POWER, PowerPC, and SPARC were all designed in such a way that there's no drawback to using 32 bit mode in this regard; they already have adequate registers available.

    In short: know what the cost/benefit of something is before you jump on it, body and soul. Having 64 bit capability is good. Knowing when to use it, and when not to, is better.

  2. Re:WTF? Why would I run this on my G5? by typhoonius · · Score: 5, Informative

    Read the fucking, uh, summary: "a 64-bit kernel as well as a 64 bit user space." OS X, while lovely, is not a 64-bit operating system.

    (Also, PowerMac G5s aren't the only computers that use the PowerPC 970; IBM also sells some.)

  3. Re:How are SLES and RHEL toys? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, SLES and RHEL have been around quite a while, and both of them work great. The big difference is "top to bottom 64-bit enviroment". On SLES and RHEL, most of userspace is 32-bit.

    It can be argued that there's any value in having a fully 64-bit userspace. You don't need a 64-bit ls or bash. But you can have them, it's not much slower than 32 bit and it works.