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

[Simon Clubley]

On 2023-11-22, John Dallman <jgd at cix.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <fac480ada2bcf8d8aa7d32d32cfcd071fe0e0aa4.camel at munted.eu>,
> alex.buell 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. 
>

I once spent a few days looking at what was involved in writing an Itanium
full-system emulator and decided I would rather write a browser from the
ground up instead of trying to implement such a thing. :-)

It is a very complex architecture, both in terms of the instruction set
(which is partially addressed by Ski) and the overall full-system design.
In addition, there is information or material (such as the firmware images)
which is not freely available.

The motivation at the time would have been to run a more functional version
of VMS than is possible on Alpha, and that motivation has now been removed
with the introduction, finally, of a viable VMS on x86-64.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.