[Info-vax] The attempts to keep Linux on Itanium (attempt number

[Neil Rieck]

On Wednesday, November 22, 2023 at 3:43:32 AM UTC-5, John Dallman wrote:
> In article <fac480ada2bcf8d8aa7d32d... at munted.eu>,
> alex.... at munted.eu (Single Stage to Orbit) wrote: 
> 
> > On Tue, 2023-11-21 at 18:36 +0000, Simon Clubley wrote: 
> > > Unlike other obscure architectures that Linux runs on, you can't 
> > > even emulate Itanium systems in a full-system emulator - you need 
> > > the actual expensive, noisy, power-hungry, etc, hardware to run it 
> > > on. 
> > I suspect it might be just possible to emulate the hardware on 
> > today's machines but one would need their head examined.
> It won't happen as a commercial project, because there isn't enough need 
> for it to pay back the costs. 
> 
> Doing it as a hobby or volunteer project is very hard, because of the 
> complexity of the architecture, and the lack of people who love it. 
> 
> Overall, it won't happen. 
> 
> John

Yep, in one of the recent Dave Cutler interviews, Dave mentioned that whenever a new Itanium chip was released, there was always a faster x86-64 chip already on the market. And since used x86-64 are now available by the boat load (HPE, Cisco, etc), doing such a project could never be justified.

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
https://neilrieck.net