Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2006 10:48:48 -0500
To: Srivatsa Vaddagiri <vatsa@in.ibm.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Subject: Re: 64-bit app on 32-bit kernel supported?
Message-ID: <20061208154848.GA19987@csclub.uwaterloo.ca>
References: <20061208153606.GC11253@in.ibm.com>
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From: lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Lennart Sorensen)
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On Fri, Dec 08, 2006 at 09:06:06PM +0530, Srivatsa Vaddagiri wrote:
> Somebody was asking this : "Does any 32-bit Linux kernel support running 64-bit 
> app on top of it (in a 64-bit platform that is)?"
> 
> AFAIK its not supported, but wanted to make sure ..

You can run 32bit programs on many 64bit kernels, but a 32bit kernel
only runs 32bit code, since the code can't use 64bit features if the
kernel doesn't know about them and know how to context switch without
loosing the 64bit extensions.  As far as I know this is true of at least
x86, hppa (not sure 64bit is supported in linux since I never worked with
one), mips and sparc.

--
Len Sorensen
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