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Date:      Tue, 17 Apr 2001 20:57:11 -0500
From:      Andrew Hesford <ajh3@chmod.ath.cx>
To:        Jeremiah Gowdy <jgowdy@home.com>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: x86-64 Hammer and IA64 Itainium
Message-ID:  <20010417205711.C64757@cec.wustl.edu>
In-Reply-To: <000001c0c777$f9529b30$215778d8@cx443070b>; from jgowdy@home.com on Tue, Apr 17, 2001 at 12:49:04PM -0700
References:  <200104171836.LAA06378@akira.lanfear.com> <000001c0c777$f9529b30$215778d8@cx443070b>

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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.

You can probably tell I'm not one to say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix
it." My general attitude is that even if it works great, new
possibilities should be explored if they promise something better. Now
is our chance. Focus main development on Alpha and Itanium (ideally,
major focus should be put on UltraSPARC and PPC, too), and leave the
x86-64 porting to people who actually care.

-- 
Andrew Hesford
ajh3@chmod.ath.cx

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