From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Duraid Madina Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 20:49:35 +0000 Subject: Re: [Linux-ia64] Re: Itanium gets supercomputing software Message-Id: List-Id: References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable To: linux-ia64@vger.kernel.org I guess I was being a bit subtle. I'm well aware there are things you can do with a simulator that you=20 can't do with hardware. Like test your code against what's supposed to=20 happen, not what actually happens. ;) My point wasn't that software simulators are useless, but that software=20 simulators _should_ be useless **4 years** (!!) after the public=20 availability of hardware. When I said: > I put it to you that software is easier to develop on hardware. I meant that at this late stage, one would expect that people would be=20 writing software, on their hardware. And not a whole lot else, all=20 things considered. Do you see x86 linux people using simulators? Once in=20 a blue moon, perhaps. Does anyone doubt that the x86-64 port will mature=20 a heck of a lot faster than linux-ia64 has? One doesn't need to think=20 for very long to realise why this might be. Don't get me wrong, I think Linus was being a complete idiot for his=20 comments against IA64 and for x86-64, but insofar as keeping hardware=20 pricing so high that Joe K. Hacker can't even dream of affording it is=20 "good business" on Intel/HP's part, it's an even better way of keeping=20 your kernel untested. Duraid David K=E5gedal wrote: > Exactly. There are a lot of things that you can do with a simulator > that you can't do with hardware. Developing software before hardware > is available is just one of them. (plug mode on) That's why we sell > simulators for most major current CPU architectures. Including IA64.