Re: Minutes from Feb 21 LSE Call

Eric W. Biederman
2003-02-26T08:36:15Z

David Mosberger <davidm@napali.hpl.hp.com> writes:

> >>>>> On Sun, 23 Feb 2003 00:07:50 -0800 (PST), David Lang
> <david.lang@digitalinsight.com> said:
>
>
> David.L> Garrit, you missed the preior posters point. IA64 had the
> David.L> same fundamental problem as the Alpha, PPC, and Sparc
> David.L> processors, it doesn't run x86 binaries.
>
> This simply isn't true. Itanium and Itanium 2 have full x86 hardware
> built into the chip (for better or worse ;-). The speed isn't as good
> as the fastest x86 chips today, but it's faster (~300MHz P6) than the
> PCs many of us are using and it certainly meets my needs better than
> any other x86 "emulation" I have used in the past (which includes
> FX!32 and its relatives for Alpha).

I have various random x86 binaries that do not work.

My 32bit x86 user space does not run.

A 32bit kernel doesn't have a chance.

So for me at least the 32bit support is not useful in avoiding
converting binaries. For the handful of apps that cannot be
recompiled I suspect the support is good enough so you can get them
to run somehow.

Eric