From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S933637AbXCPLoU (ORCPT ); Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:44:20 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S933662AbXCPLoU (ORCPT ); Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:44:20 -0400 Received: from one.firstfloor.org ([213.235.205.2]:49464 "EHLO one.firstfloor.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S933637AbXCPLoT (ORCPT ); Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:44:19 -0400 Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2007 12:44:15 +0100 From: Andi Kleen To: Christoph Lameter Cc: Steven Rostedt , Andi Kleen , Linus Torvalds , Martin Bligh , Ingo Molnar , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Andrew Morton , Chris Wright , Rusty Russell , Glauber de Oliveira Costa Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/18] Make common x86 arch area for i386 and x86_64 - Take 2 Message-ID: <20070316114415.GA26403@one.firstfloor.org> References: <20070314050819.536207642@goodmis.org> <20070314125330.GA13168@elte.hu> <45F96B57.10206@mbligh.org> <20070315160648.GA11812@one.firstfloor.org> <1173977264.7922.24.camel@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > In the future it is likely that x86_64 will significantly deviate from It already is in some cases. And I agree more will happen. > i386. i386 is going to be gradually abandoned because it does not support > the ever larger memory sizes and be mainly used for embedded devices. The desktop/server user base is quite conservative so that will take a long time, but gradually probably. > x86_64 is going to acquire more functionality that will not be available > for i386. We plan f.e. to add virtual memmap support for x86_64. Virtual What advantage would that have over the current setup? We already should handle holes between nodes reasonably efficiently and with nonlinear memory even holes inside nodes shouldn't be a problem. > memmap support may require a large chunk of virtual memory space that is > not available on i386. Its not good to have to deal with i386 issues when > doing x86_64 arch development. If the great merged architecture ever happens this would be needed anyways. Just basic 32bit support isn't too difficult anyways -- the problem are more the old bugs. -Andi