From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Apr 26 15:59:47 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from peorth.iteration.net (peorth.iteration.net [208.190.180.178]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4A64E37B422 for ; Thu, 26 Apr 2001 15:59:38 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from keichii@peorth.iteration.net) Received: by peorth.iteration.net (Postfix, from userid 1001) id B66C359483; Thu, 26 Apr 2001 17:59:06 -0500 (CDT) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2001 17:59:06 -0500 From: "Michael C . Wu" To: Jeremiah Gowdy Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: x86-64 Hammer and IA64 Itainium Message-ID: <20010426175906.B88522@peorth.iteration.net> Reply-To: "Michael C . Wu" Mail-Followup-To: "Michael C . Wu" , Jeremiah Gowdy , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG References: <200104171836.LAA06378@akira.lanfear.com> <000001c0c777$f9529b30$215778d8@cx443070b> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <000001c0c777$f9529b30$215778d8@cx443070b>; from jgowdy@home.com on Tue, Apr 17, 2001 at 12:49:04PM -0700 X-PGP-Fingerprint: 5025 F691 F943 8128 48A8 5025 77CE 29C5 8FA1 2E20 X-PGP-Key-ID: 0x8FA12E20 Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, Apr 17, 2001 at 12:49:04PM -0700, Jeremiah Gowdy scribbled: | I'd like to know if anyone's considering support for the new AMD | Sledgehammer/Clawhammer/*hammer with x86-64 architecture. I know the new | hammer cpus will run as _very_ fast x86-32 processors, and FreeBSD would run | happily under that, however, the x86-64 architecture offers major advantages | over the 32bit architecture. More than simply 64bit integers. Like the | Itainium, the Hammer has more registers. Not as many as Itainium's 128 | 64bit general purpose registers, but a good 16 64bit registers rather than | I'm studying the AMD architecture in an effort to port my x86 assembly | skills to x86-64. Learning IA64 assembly seems pointless since they want With the branch prediction, cache tracing, and EPIC instructions, you really want to use an ILP compiler. Without a compiler that can decide on good ways to output binaries that run with all the IA-64 innovations^Wreinvention-of-the-wheels. I will reserve my opinions on whether Intel will succeed in implementing the EPIC stuff well. ;-) IIRC, KA-64 does not even have an emulator yet. Rest assured that there will be a lot of people in and out of this project interested in supporting a KA-64 port of FreeBSD. | everything done with an ILP capable compiler for maximum performance. | Although my kernel programming skills are in their infancy, I am a good C | and assembly language programmer. Perhaps I could contribute to the FreeBSD | x86-64 project, if and when there was one. When Sledgehammer comes out, we will see what we can do. :) -- +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | keichii@iteration.net | keichii@freebsd.org | | http://iteration.net/~keichii | Yes, BSD is a conspiracy. | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message