Re: [PATCH 00/18] Make common x86 arch area for i386 and x86_64 - Take 2

Christoph Lameter
2007-03-16T04:28:30Z

On Thu, 15 Mar 2007, Steven Rostedt wrote:

> On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 17:06 +0100, Andi Kleen wrote:
>
> > Well I just see a lot of pain from these patches but I doubt
> > they will avoid any bugs. If people don't compile test both
> > archs they will always likely break on another. There are lots
> > of subtle dependencies that are not expressed in the pathname
> > even after this intrusive operation (e.g. in the includes).
> >
> > That's just how it is.
>
> Or that's just how you see it.

In the future it is likely that x86_64 will significantly deviate from
i386. i386 is going to be gradually abandoned because it does not support
the ever larger memory sizes and be mainly used for embedded devices.
x86_64 is going to acquire more functionality that will not be available
for i386. We plan f.e. to add virtual memmap support for x86_64. Virtual
memmap support may require a large chunk of virtual memory space that is
not available on i386. Its not good to have to deal with i386 issues when
doing x86_64 arch development.