Intel Itanium IA-64 Support Removed With The Linux 6.7 Kernel

[ayumu]

The one major software vendor who sleeps on RISC-V currently is Microsoft.

Do they really?

RISC-V Summit a year ago (this years' next week by the way) had foundation members mentioning extensions in the context of them being required for "Windows for RISC-V".

Expect Windows for RISC-V, because they've been working on it for a year, at a minimum.

Microsoft is not so dumb as to not pay close attention to what's going on in the industry.

[ayumu]

As long as ARM and RISC-V insist on doing boards with integrated CPU it will never become a platform because users cannot upgrade cheaply.

Neither ARM nor RISC-V are in the business of making chips nor boards.

And, unlike ARM, RISC-V is not even making microarchitectures. The foundation does only concern the specifications, promote the ISA, and ensure use of its trademarks is linked to certification of compliance with the specs.

[chithanh]

The one major software vendor who sleeps on RISC-V currently is Microsoft.

And Apple. And SAP, and Salesforce, IBM, and on and on.

Apple doesn't sleep on RISC-V. They are member of the consortium which promotes RISC-V and they have been hiring RISC-V system engineers since 2021.
SAP and Salesforce, they don't make commodity products, and are not important for the software ecosystem either.
IBM will probably promote the RISC-V port of Fedora to official status within a couple releases, followed by next major RHEL release.

RISC-V isn't an immediate threat to ARM though it may become one. But even if it does, it won't be because it's a superior ISA. It's because it's a free ISA (as in beer).

That RISC-V is not a impending threat is seen very differently at ARM. ARM even launched a Microsoft "Get the Facts" inspired campaign against RISC-V, called RISC-V: Understand the facts. Back then it was mainly universities which turned towards RISC-V, but the writing was on the wall.

Either way, neither Microsoft nor Apple are going to give it much attention for at least another 5-10 years... roughly how much time architectures tend to go from technology previews where RISC-V is now to viable products. Smart phones don't have huge raw performance needs. Servers, workstations, and desktops do. It took 10 years for Apple to go from its first all in house mobile SoC to releasing a desktop class product that blew Intel away, then another two years to stick it in high end desktops and workstations. Altera is still working on cracking the server market with its high core count ARM CPUs.

As for when the first Apple product with RISC-V releases and when that will be, I don't know. Presumably it will first appear in auxiliary coprocessors, think Apple T2, Allwinner AR100, or Intel ME. An Apple product that uses RISC-V as main CPU is probably a few years away at least, and I expect the Apple Watch (or something which they don't sell today) to be the first such product.

The one major software vendor who sleeps on RISC-V currently is Microsoft.

Do they really?

RISC-V Summit a year ago (this years' next week by the way) had foundation members mentioning extensions in the context of them being required for "Windows for RISC-V".

Expect Windows for RISC-V, because they've been working on it for a year, at a minimum.

Microsoft is not so dumb as to not pay close attention to what's going on in the industry.

I think they do. Best indication is Microsoft's open source projects. Like .NET didn't have initial RISC-V support until last year, and it was contributed by someone at Samsung, can do little more than Hello World, and the build breaks frequently…

Clearly RISC-V coverage in Microsoft tooling is not there yet, which I expect years in advance of a Windows release.

[Estranged1906]

So is there any modern OS still supporting legacy Itanium hardware? I mean even olders ISAs like PA-RISC or Alpha are still supported by Linux and the BSDs: https://eylenburg.github.io/os_comparison.htm

But for Itanium:
HP-UX -> scheduled end of life in 2026
Linux -> dropped from kernel, old LTS versions and distros like K-UX will support it a few more years
OpenVMS -> new versions only support x86_64, but old version will be supported in Itanium until 2028

FreeBSD -> dropped support a long time ago
Windows Server -> ditto
NetBSD -> never supported it in the first place (only experimental)

[JustRob]

So is there any modern OS still supporting legacy Itanium hardware? I mean even olders ISAs like PA-RISC or Alpha are still supported by Linux and ...

Gentoo supports Itanium: https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/#ia64

With the push towards IBM's Telum and Power10 for Enterprise the writing was long ago written for the Itanic.

[Estranged1906]

Gentoo supports Itanium: https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/#ia64

With the push towards IBM's Telum and Power10 for Enterprise the writing was long ago written for the Itanic.

I guess Gentoo will stop supporting it as upstream Linux did.

It's weird to think that older hardware like m68k, alpha, pa-risc and superh is going to be supported for longer than ia64.

[hotaru]

I guess Gentoo will stop supporting it as upstream Linux did.

It's weird to think that older hardware like m68k, alpha, pa-risc and superh is going to be supported for longer than ia64.

m68k and superh hardware is way more common than ia64, so that probably has something to do with it for those two.