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4.3.1 Background
The goal of the project to port the Linux kernel to the Itanium platform was to
have a single optimized port of the Linux kernel for every Itanium-based machine.
The kernel has been available at
The development model used to create this new porting of the kernel was the
same as used for other Linux development work: open source developers
working together around the world on a cooperative effort to bring it available
before any other operating system and even before the official release of the
processor itself. This is one of the key points of Linux' success, and also of this
Itanium 2 port of the kernel.
This effort was also possible thanks to many companies and institutions that
contributed on this development effort, such as Intel, IBM, Caldera (now SCO
Group), the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Red Hat,
SGI, SuSE, Turbolinux, and VA Linux Systems (now VA Software).
Each company distributed the work among their developers to achieve the best
results. The main tasks were:
Port the kernel itself
Initial port of GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) to IA-64 architecture
Port of GAS, emacs, ld, GNUPro toolkit
Port of performance, measurement, and analysis tools
Intel provided the IA-32 and IA-64 platform specifications and the EFI, and
helped on the Apache port. The rest of the work was distributed among the
companies involved, and also by private individuals around the world.
Linux for IA-64 provides a new pure 64-bit kernel but maintains compatibility at
the API level with Linux for x86 wherever this is possible. The error messages,
the system signal, and the ioctl codes will remain as compatible as possible
between the two platforms. Also in this version, as started in the Linux kernel
from Version 2.1.126 onwards, developers tried to minimize changes to make the
code as platform-independent as possible, while optimizing the platform-specific
features to improve performance on Itanium processors.
The IA-64 Linux kernel follows the standards defined by Intel and other
companies. These include:
EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) — see
http://developer.intel.com/technology/efi/
DIG64 (Developers Interface Guide for 64-bit Intel Architecture Servers) —
see
http://www.dig64.org
http://www.kernel.org
Chapter 4. Installation
since early 2000.
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