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ARM Publishes 64-bit "AArch64" Linux Kernel Support

Posted by timothy on from the avoiding-the-wrath-of-linus dept.

An anonymous reader writes "ARM Holdings has made available Linux kernel support for AArch64, the ARMv8 64-bit architecture. No 64-bit ARMv8 hardware is yet shipping until later this year, but ARM has prepared the 36 patches amounting to 23,000 lines of architecture code for mainline integration."

7 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. Well done by Lefty2446 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's awesome that a major chip manufacturer is willing to invest time to implement a new architecture in the Linux kernel.

    Pity that windows isn't open sourced, they wont benefit from this effort ;-)

    1. Re:Well done by jd · · Score: 4, Informative

      Don't be so sure - first to market is a major factor in business and if Linux is likely to beat all other rival OS' by a large enough margin in time, commercial vendors will look at that very seriously. More than a few would likely "gamble" (*cough*) on a free OS and gain marketshare when the profits are high than risk coming in very late when there's much less money floating around, a much higher entry fee and customers unhappy with them being late to the party.

      It is, of course, essential that the chip works (remember Transmeta?), but hardware sells when there's software and if there's Linux support then there's software - and a lot of it. Assuming nobody has messed up, the chip is going to get deployed. The question is only one of where. Phones, yes, but not necessarily immediately as a lot of apps are compiled natively (not to an intermediate form) and the market is crowded with patent trolls right now.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    2. Re:Well done by Ginger+Unicorn · · Score: 4, Informative

      ARM holdings isn't a manufacturer, they're a design company that license the architecture to many manufacturers.

      --
      (1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
    3. Re:Well done by beelsebob · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Do you really think Microsoft provides their kernel source to ARM? Do you REALLY think ARM would code hardware support in windows for free?

      Yes, and yes. It's in both their interests to do so, Microsoft's, because it gets them kernel support for a new arch written for free, ARM's because it sells chips (and by extension, chip designs).

  2. Re:Bandwidth? by romiz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Do you realize that the chip on the other end of a SATA link - typically the controller in the SSD you're using right now - has a lot of chances to be an ARM chip ? It is the case for common SSD disk controllers (Marvell or Sandforce).

    And even if it is not common in today's products, there are a lot of recent high-level ARM SoCs that offer SATA - not least because its low pin count makes it easier to route on the board in the end than a parallel bus. For example, TI's OMAP5, Freescale i.MX53 or CSR's Prima 2 have SATA support.

  3. Re:Bandwidth? by Exrio · · Score: 3, Informative

    afaik it's 48bit memory addressing though what it supports

    For the record, it's also what most current AMD64 implementations support: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Architectural_features

  4. Awesome... 23k lines gives support to a new arch by IYagami · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think that what is really awesome is that adding just 23k lines of code gives you support for a new CPU architecture!