Fwd: Re: [ILUG] FW: i386 on IA64

[Darragh Bailey]

Forwarding original mail to list so that the original response can be seen.


----- Forwarded message from Darragh Bailey <felix at compsoc.nuigalway.ie> -----
    Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 15:08:32 +0000
    From: Darragh Bailey <felix at compsoc.nuigalway.ie>
Reply-To: Darragh Bailey <felix at compsoc.nuigalway.ie>
 Subject: Re: [ILUG] FW: i386 on IA64
      To: adam <lists at beecher.net>

Quoting adam <lists at beecher.net>:

> [Please reply off-list.]
>
> Can you install an i386 distribution on an IA64 machine? If so, does it fall
> back to 32-bit cleanly? Are there any performance implications?
>
> Thanks,
> adam

no.

IA64 is itanium, its 64 bit only and the processor does not understand x86
instructions.

You can only install a distribution that has been compiled for IA64. The kernel
should fail to boot.


Are you sure you haven't confused this with the IA32e (aka EM64T) processors?
which are 64bit x86 processors from intel?

They can run i386 code quite happily.


Only major performance issues I can see from running 32bit code on a 64bit
architecture is that you don't get any of the benefits of 64bit address space
for memory access (i.e >4GB ram) and any registry access code will be optimized
for 32bit access. Not sure if the last part will mean inefficient use of cpu
registers by the code. I don't know what tricks were added into the CPU's for
handling 32bit code efficently.


btw, why would you only want replies off list.

--
Darragh

"Nothing's foolproof to a sufficently talented fool"

----- End forwarded message -----


--
Darragh

"Nothing's foolproof to a sufficently talented fool"