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Date:      Thu, 26 Apr 2001 17:59:06 -0500
From:      "Michael C . Wu" <keichii@iteration.net>
To:        Jeremiah Gowdy <jgowdy@home.com>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: x86-64 Hammer and IA64 Itainium
Message-ID:  <20010426175906.B88522@peorth.iteration.net>
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 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. |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+

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