Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 16:24:18 +0200 (CEST) From: Remy Nonnenmacher <remy@boostworks.com> To: ajh3@chmod.ath.cx Cc: jgowdy@home.com, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: x86-64 Hammer and IA64 Itainium Message-ID: <200104181422.f3IELwC11439@luxren2.boostworks.com> In-Reply-To: <20010417205711.C64757@cec.wustl.edu>
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On 17 Apr, Andrew Hesford wrote: > On Tue, Apr 17, 2001 at 12:49:04PM -0700, Jeremiah Gowdy wrote: >> I would love to see FreeBSD running natively (64bit) under the x86-64 >> architecture, and unlike the Itainium, it's differences with x86-32 >> seem to be few (of course). > >> Porting FreeBSD to Itainium would/will/could be a much much larger >> project than the port to x86-64. > > First things first... paragraphs would be nice. Large chunks of words > are hard to read. > > Second, it is this difference from x86 that I think is justification > enough to focus on Itanium rather than x86-64. I'm not sure exactly how > x86-64 works, but it seems to me that it's simply the standard x86 > architecture expanded to 64 bits. > > Isn't time we kill the x86? It's been around too long. I'm not sure how > the Itanium looks, and I'm no Intel freak, but a change would be nice. > We should begin moving in the direction of RISC (or at least VLIW). > > There's a reason every other processor has a radically different > architecture. Motorola, Sun and Digital all broke new ground with their > processors, because the x86 doesn't amount to all that much any more. > Remember, this technology was designed for 20-year old computers. > For sure. Look at how it's pretty more easy to use an ARM or MIPS core to handle gluelessly the PCI, SDRAM, Flash etc... and just add specific components for the analogic interface side. X86 (and -64) is going to be just die hard PC and workstations where deadly wrong past must be taken into account at the price of wasted power. Futur is more than probably Itanium and alike for servers CPUs and a bunch of ARMs for low-level I/O tasks. Back to imagination. (Take a look at 0.15um copper process FPGAs with embeded ARM at Altera, for example, and you will see why no one, in the futur, will never ever need a proprietary and undocumented 'server class' SCSI or network card). It would be really interesting to have a server-class FreeBSD SMPng version and, in conjonction, an highly portable and small Pico-bsd like one to animate the embeded processors. RN. IeM To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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