Porting Linux Software to the IA64 Platform

axehind writes "In this Byte.com article, Dr Moshe Bar explains some of the differences between IA32 and IA64. He also explains some things to watch out for when porting applications to the IA64 architecture."

Awesome!

[Wakko Warner]

Now I, and the other two IA64 users, will have some programs to run on our Linux-64 boxes!

Can someone please port nethack for us?

- A.P.

Major difference

[Anonymous Coward]

The major difference between IA32 and IA64 is price.

There are a number of adjustments to make.

[Anonymous Coward]

IA64 is twice as wide as IA32. Therefore, it will be necessary to remember to halve the size of all variables to compensate in your programs. Additionally, we now have to type twice as much for each command or function. It really sucks that we will no longer see Ms. Portman onscreen in Star Wars anymore. So, in conclusion, nuts to IA64: I'm sticking with my Athlon, thank you very much.

MOSIX + porting

[Ed Avis]

Well obviously what we'll see next is a kernel extension that dynamically 'ports' all your applications to IA-64 and transparently migrates them to IA-64 machines elsewhere in the cluster. When Intel's next Great Leap Forward is released, you'll be able to transparently migrate to that as well. In fact it will be so transparent, you won't notice any difference and you can continue working at your 80286-based machine without any interruption.

Re:MOSIX + porting

[morbid]

Last summer at the London Linux Expo I asked this HP reseller (who had a big itanic display) "what about legacy code?"

He replied,"16-bit code?"

I sighed and moved on...

Re:Just learning assembly now

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you learn x86 assmebly and Java. I guess you'll do XOR in the long run, eh?

Use Java

[matsh]

And forget about the problem!

Mats