Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S964992AbVINDpU (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Sep 2005 23:45:20 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932584AbVINDpU (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Sep 2005 23:45:20 -0400 Received: from smtpout.mac.com ([17.250.248.70]:15814 "EHLO smtpout.mac.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932583AbVINDpT (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Sep 2005 23:45:19 -0400 In-Reply-To: <432705A0.1070407@spamtest.viacore.net> References: <4325F3D5.9040109@spamtest.viacore.net> <20050912.144107.37064900.davem@davemloft.net> <4325FADB.4090804@spamtest.viacore.net> <20050912.151230.100651236.davem@davemloft.net> <43260A8D.1090508@spamtest.viacore.net> <20050913165228.GG28578@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> <432705A0.1070407@spamtest.viacore.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v734) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed Message-Id: <5A770DA0-A30F-45B1-A47A-2FD21714FA3C@mac.com> Cc: Lennart Sorensen , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Kyle Moffett Subject: Re: Pure 64 bootloaders Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 23:44:55 -0400 To: Joe Bob Spamtest X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.734) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1234 Lines: 30 On Sep 13, 2005, at 13:00:16, Joe Bob Spamtest wrote: >> Is the alpha also pure 64bit? > > Alpha was designed 64-bit from the start. DEC did a lot of neat > things with the design of that processor -- it's a shame it went > the way of the dodo when ia64 was proposed. PowerPC was designed 64-bit from the start too! It's just that the architecture design group also realized that there would be a demand for 32-bit CPUs, and so from the _64-bit_ system, they designed a 32- bit system whose entire instruction set would be forward-compatible to 64-bit systems when they came out. That's why 32-bit PowerPC machine code and 64-bit PowerPC machine code are completely identical except that 64-bit CPUs also have a few opcodes to process 64-bit data and a few extra kernel-mode registers. Cheers, Kyle Moffett -- I lost interest in "blade servers" when I found they didn't throw knives at people who weren't supposed to be in your machine room. -- Anthony de Boer - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/