Intel/HP Release Linux SDK For IA-64 35
HerbieTMac writes: "Intel and HP are releasing HP's IA-64 emulator for Linux later this week. Particularly interesting is that this emulator will be free (as in beer) for download from Intel's and HP's Web sites."
ahh so it'll do m68k then? (Score:1)
Great! (Score:1)
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Compaq dropping MAILWorks?
Re:But will it really take off? (Score:1)
Re:Too many acronyms! (Score:1)
HP - Hewlett Packard
IA - Intel Architecture
SDK - Software Development Kit
Re:Too many acronyms! (Score:1)
Re:Somewhat flameish, but... (Score:1)
Available already? (Score:1)
This is the top highlight on the HP site [hp.com] right now, and there seem to be a few download links at the HP Software Depot [hp.com] and the Intel Developer site [intel.com]. I am not going to have time to download and play with this myself just yet, so I look forward to seeing comments from people who try it out.
WHy an emulator (Score:1)
I might be wrong but.. (Score:1)
Re:When you say 'Linux'... (Score:1)
Re:But will it really take off? (Score:1)
If clock speed was all that mattered we would all be running AMD athlon and pention III chips at the moment.
Re:Interesting license - open source developers on (Score:1)
Personally, I think that if they're going to give something away for free they ought to take the risk that someone will make money using it.
When you say 'Linux'... (Score:1)
This seems to be a common problem with binary software releases - many people seem to forget that there is life outside of Intel chips.
If every one is jumping on the bandwagon ... (Score:1)
on the other hand, I can only imagine the prices!
Re:Too many acronyms! (Score:1)
Re:Linux distribution? (Score:2)
http://www.ia64linux.org/
To download preleases of Linux for ia64 (but it won't do you any good if you can't get ahold of a machine, which you probably can't unless you work for a company that has an agreement with Intel.) you can use either Turbo Linux
http://www.turbolinux.com/devzone/
or RedHat
ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/ia64
Suse and Caldera should have distributions soon.
But the emulator is a way to start porting software before the hardware is generally available.
Linux distribution? (Score:2)
Is there a prerelease of RedHat, Debian or whatever compiled for IA-64? And how would it interact with your real system (file sharing etc)? I'd certainly want to do the editing and compiling natively.
It would be useful if the emulated IA-64 system had some kind of virtual network device that communicates with the host system as if it were an Ethernet or PPP link. Then you could just pop up emulated xterms and share files via NFS to the emulated system.
Re:WHy an emulator (Score:2)
Re:WHy an emulator (Score:2)
If my memory serves me, the compiler is already being worked on (in fact, I'd be surprised if it wasn't included in this package). But a compiler is useless without the machine to test the code on. As we can't have one (yet), this is the next best thing.
Cheers,
Tim
VLIW (Score:2)
:)
-AP
I don't understand :-) (Score:2)
But will it really take off? (Score:2)
What I want to know is weather or not people think this architecture will really take off. As we all know, the IA-64 architecture has been delayed many times. According to the first reports out I should probably have one on my desk allready. This intern will drive up the price higher and higher
It's great that we're gonig to have an emulator, and i'm sure it's not long before g++ is ported and all our applications can move on over. This isn't going to be cheap though...
Are people really going to run out and buy a brand new system with this processor? The market is very saturated with pentium this and pentium that, is this going to be big enough to have an immeadiate impact? And how long till we get a reverse engineered AMD chip that's affordable?
The way i see it, the emulator is going to be all a lot of us are going to see for a while. I know I don't have the money to go out and buy one of these things as soon as they hit the shelves.
Re:WHy an emulator (Score:2)
Gill gets out his clue-stick. Thwaaack!
The compiler produces native IA64 code.
The compiler runs on Linux.
Since there is currently a somewhat limited supply of IA64 hardware (i.e., none) the SDK includes a simulator so you can test your IA64-compiled programs.
BTW, SGI [sgi.com] released their IA64 compilers a month ago.
GPC (Score:2)
Shouldn't that read GCC or is there something I'm missing? Why would anyone want a Pascal compiler?
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes" - Oscar Wilde
Re:I'm not suprised at all (Score:2)
Here's why:
1.) The IA-64 is not designed to compete for the desktop market. This chip is powerful. All of the new high-end HP workstations/compute servers/file servers are designed for this chip. When the chip is finally available, the users can remove an adaptor in the machine and simply plug in the new chip. The main competition is from Sun or SGI.
2.) Since the chip is the next best thing from Intel, then it will make it to the desktop. Even then it'll be the power user who needs high video game FPS, or is doing CAD work at home. Most of the desktop market would prefer an hacked i-opener to a full PC, just because it is simple and one can drag it around the house with them.
3.) As much as you complain about having to support a brand new architecture, look at all of the people saying that what is holding Intel/Microsoft/Large Corporation back is backwards compatibility. This chip breaks away from that and offers revolutionary features in the manner of branch prediction and I'm sure other areas. It is a big complicated power-hungry chip, but as a CAD station, that won't make a difference.
Finally, I think that IA-64 will catch on, even with charging for development. Intel's marketing might will help, but the high-end market for computers will keep new applications coming.
IA-64 Linux NUE Environment - Download from here (Score:3)
NUE provides the toolchain (compiler, linker, assembler), the libraries, and execution environment necessary to develop IA-64 Linux software. A user running within NUE can compile, link and execute applications as if he or she were on an IA-64 system executing the Linux operating system. (72 MB)
ftp://download.intel.com/design/IA-64/lnx_nue.htm [intel.com]
Finally - 64-Bit on the Intel plaform (Score:3)
--------------------------------
[root@localhost
#include
#include
int main (void)
{
unsigned long int myvar;
printf ("Size of int : %d\n", sizeof (myvar));
exit (0);
}
[root@localhost
[root@localhost
./moks: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, IA-64, version 1, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped
[root@localhost
Size of int : 8
--------------------------------
So.. It obviously works; compiler and everything
This message is printed on 100% recycled electrons.
I have used it (Score:3)
You start the NUE and get your usual UNIX shell,
The whole thing runs mostly IA32 binarys, but once you try to run IA64 code, it automatically triggers the SKI IA64 emulator via binfmt_misc. So it's really fast compared to a complete emulation, but still gives you a (more or less) native environment.
I have no idea, how they run this subsystem, it even has its own
(I'm using it for documenting how SGI's GPL Fortran 90 compiler interfaces their I/O-library, so that we can use it in GNU g95, the Fortran 95 compiler that is going to be part of GCC. See http://g95.sourceforge.net for information on this project)
According to Intel... (Score:3)
According to this page [intel.com], properly optimized code will be able to execute 8-12 parallel operations/cycle. This is hardly a "waste", as you put it, of designer effort. Willamette will only beat it in terms of IA-32 code, because Merced will only emulate it.
Running native IA-64 code, unless AMD's got something up its sleeve that no one's talking about, Merced will blow Sledgehammer and Willamette out of the water instruction-wise clock for clock. Kinda the reverse philosophy of Willamette.
IMHO, I think EPIC's going to kick some major hiney, in terms of pure processing power, as soon as Intel scales up the clock speeds (coming in McKinley and beyond). It's a pretty nice concept (removing guesswork from optimization) and I have to give Intel props for sticking with their guns.
Links to Intel and HP pages for this (Score:3)
Why free beer? (Score:3)
Re:But will it really take off? (Score:3)
I'm not suprised at all (Score:3)
Given that the uptake of the IA-64 is likely to be slow enough anyway, the idea of making people pay a hefty amount for this tool is one that's just too stupid for words. Intel and HP need to have software available for the chip, since otherwise nobody will touch it with a bargepole despite all of Intel's marketing might.
No, the two companies are taking a huge risk by starting with a fresh, non-compatible arhcitecture, and they're going to want as much support for it as quickly as possible. This way they can get the Linux developer crowd, always eager for a new platform, to start work on an IA-64 version as quickly as possible, so that the server market will be open to the chip.
No, it's not suprising really. Not doing this would have put Intel/HP at the mercy of closed source development houses, many of whom are going to be very unwilling to risk the jump to a new platform.
---
Jon E. Erikson
Somewhat flameish, but... (Score:4)
The ISA is very big and complex and doesn't actually look any simpler than the x86 ISA. The designers also seem to have pretty much missed on what a good new architecture should actually do - they concentrated on trying to maximise IPC (Instructions Per Cycle - ie how many instructions you can issue per clock cycle), when current designs have pretty much already gotten as good as practically possible. So, all that complexity to increase IPC is pretty much going to go to waste...
I'm not that surprised it's late, consumes huge amounts of power (100W at 600MHz or something), and slower than expected. Also, given that they're going to cost $2000-$4000 each, and that Intel's own Pentium 4 (Willamette) will beat it in terms of pure performance, as well as price/performance, I don't think there's going to be much demand. (and multiprocessor Athlon motherboards will be out before too long, and there's plenty of good stuff from the RISC vendors if you wish to splash out...)
Intel/HP would have been much better off doing something like the Alpha 21464 (a few years away), the MAJC (few months away), or some of IBMs recent POWER chips - already on sale. I kinda pity the poor guys who actually have to implement the design since the higher level architects seem to have introduced the concept of bloatware to chip design...
Sorry, kinda been wanting to say this for a while now.
Interesting license - open source developers only (Score:4)
Interesting that the license says:
HP grants you a license to Use the Software solely for the purposes of (i) teaching and training of the IA-64 architecture by non-profit educational institutions and (ii) for developing software for Open Source operating systems.
It seems you can't use it to develop for a proprietary OS without special permission from HP.