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Linux 4.17 Spring Cleaning To Drop Some Old CPU Architectures

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  • #31
    Originally posted by Vistaus View Post
    It matters for distros like Ubuntu that ship with every driver known to mankind and every default boot flag.
    architecture is not a driver

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    • #32
      Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
      most 64-bit parts are also run in 32-bit mode because they don't have more than 4GB of RAM
      64bit mode has nothing to do with amount of ram. 8086 was 16bit cpu with 1m of ram. 32bit pentiums with pae have much more than 4gb of ram. running 64bit cpu in 32bit mode is not very smart, because it will have smaller address space, less registers and in general worse isa

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      • #33
        Originally posted by Vistaus View Post

        But if Axis is still using CRIS (and Axis is a pretty popular brand for webcams at least), then why is the kernel team dropping support for it? I could understand if Axis was a very small company and/or they were not using CRIS anymore, but they are not small at all and they might still be using CRIS...
        I seriously doubt that they are using CRIS any more. Their own internal "future death or not" evaluation was around 2003. I haven't checked in with them since. So although it's an entirely functional and pretty ok architecture, it serves no real purpose today. The CRIS had bad architectural scaling issues. Much like built-for-a-demo-x86, but Intel kept on investing billions.

        I'd bet that they've moved specific video functions to fpga's (rather simple since they have all the code already) and are using generic ARM/whatever cpu's for the more mundane SoC stuff.
        Last edited by milkylainen; 19 March 2018, 01:11 AM.

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        • #34
          Originally posted by pal666 View Post
          64bit mode has nothing to do with amount of ram. 8086 was 16bit cpu with 1m of ram. 32bit pentiums with pae have much more than 4gb of ram. running 64bit cpu in 32bit mode is not very smart, because it will have smaller address space, less registers and in general worse isa
          It was true several years ago that (some) Windows computers with 64-bit processors were being sold pre-installed with 32-bit Windows, presumably to improve compatibility since all software was compiled for 32-bit Windows. I don't think that's still the case, and it isn't so much of an issue on Linux anyway, since most things can just be recompiled for any architecture.

          The day I first installed Linux was the day I learned my computer actually had a 64-bit processor...

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          • #35
            Originally posted by pal666 View Post
            64bit mode has nothing to do with amount of ram. 8086 was 16bit cpu with 1m of ram. 32bit pentiums with pae have much more than 4gb of ram. running 64bit cpu in 32bit mode is not very smart, because it will have smaller address space, less registers and in general worse isa
            There is less reason to go 64-bit when you only have 256 or 512 MiB of RAM. More registers is the only really compelling reason for ARM IMO. And not compelling enough for e.g. Raspberry Pi, but I think that's more to do with Broadcom blobs sadly?

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            • #36
              Originally posted by pal666 View Post
              64bit mode has nothing to do with amount of ram. 8086 was 16bit cpu with 1m of ram. 32bit pentiums with pae have much more than 4gb of ram. running 64bit cpu in 32bit mode is not very smart, because it will have smaller address space, less registers and in general worse isa
              I'm talking of embedded devices, not PC or servers or high-performance stuff. The only reason an embedded device would want 64bit is because of RAM. For anything needing serious processing power they have hardware accelerators anyway.

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              • #37
                Originally posted by ids1024 View Post
                It was true several years ago that (some) Windows computers with 64-bit processors were being sold pre-installed with 32-bit Windows, presumably to improve compatibility since all software was compiled for 32-bit Windows.
                They were preinstalled with Win 32bit because Windows "multiarch" runtime (to run 32bit applications in a 64bit system) uses a stupid high amount of RAM.

                But I was talking of embedded devices, like routers and NAS and cameras and IoT and whatever. Most of these things have between 32 and 256 MB of RAM and aren't running particularly heavy software in the first place.

                These devices still have and use 32-bit processors or have 64-bit processors run in 32-bit mode to save RAM and because it's just faster to keep using their legacy software stack that was 32-bit.

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                • #38
                  Originally posted by Azrael5 View Post
                  it's time to drop all the cpus based on 32bit architecture.
                  No... there's still a lot of emdedded / IOT / low-power devices (toys, phones, routers, SBCs, Controller Cards, etc.) using 32-bit CPUs/MCUs as well as 32-bit soft-cores supported by the kernel, which deserve to continue to receive device driver updates for some years to come. Many of these devices have launched in 2018 and many many more will come, and will interface with devices that will only ever exist because of the economies that these devices create.

                  Is it time to stop developing Desktop systems with 32-bit CPUs? Yes. Absolutely.

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                  • #39
                    Actually, 64-bit is very old by now as well. When will we get 128-bit? :P (and I mean true 128-bit CPU's for desktops/laptops, not for specialized systems)

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                    • #40
                      Originally posted by Vistaus View Post
                      Actually, 64-bit is very old by now as well. When will we get 128-bit? :P (and I mean true 128-bit CPU's for desktops/laptops, not for specialized systems)
                      For what purpose? What practical application is there for a 128 bit CPU that cannot be done with a 64 bit CPU?

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