GCC Approves AArch64, ARM 64-bit Compiler Port

The Linux 3.7 kernel introduces support for 64-bit ARM, a.k.a. AArch64. In further enabling 64-bit ARM support under Linux, the GCC Steering Committee has now officially accepted the AArch64 port of the GNU Compiler Collection. 64-bit ARM now has a compiler!

For many months there has been work on 64-bit ARM in GCC and patches have been available, but not officially accepted by GCC as a port to the new ARM architecture. However, the steering committee has now officially approved this work so that it can be on its way into the mainline GCC compiler code-base.

Here's the brief email announcement: "I am pleased to announce that the GCC Steering Committee has accepted the AArch64 port for inclusion in GCC and appointed Richard Earnshaw and Marcus Shawcroft as co-maintainers."

On the kernel side, in yesterday's 3.7-rc1 release announcement, Linus Torvalds criticized the 64-bit ARM kernel work for replicating the 32-bit ARM arch code rather than merging it back with the 32-bit code.