Re: Building i386 binaries on ia64.

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Hi,

Rob Andrews <rob@choralone.org> writes:

> On 14-Apr-2007 16:14.22 (BST), Al Stone wrote:
>  > I personally have no idea why there are ia32-libs on ia64.  The
>  > only possible reasons I can think of are: (1) older versions of
>  > the processor did have a small x86 processor on chip so it could
>  > execute x86 binaries, or (2) it allows one to use the Intel ia32el
>  > layer (a software layer to emulate x86 on ia64, but unfortunately
>  > proprietary code).
>
> I don't think ia32el is in Debian (nothing in pool/i/ for contrib or
> non-free).
>
> The wikipedia article on ia64 sheds a little light, and indicates that point
> 1 is probably correct (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ia64#IA-32_support):
>
>   "The original IA-64 architecture included support for IA-32 instructions
>   and could therefore run the many thousands of applications available for
>   x86-based systems. This can eliminate the added expense and complexity of
>   deploying a second server or porting code from IA-32 to IA-64. However,
>   performance was slower than for native IA-64 code and about 50% slower
>   than for the same IA-32 code running on x86 servers of the time."
>
> It goes on to say that it was removed starting with Montecito in July 2006,
> and replaced with emulation instead.
>
> I'm giving up on the thought of building i386 binaries on ia64 in that case!
>
> Thanks for the heads up.
> rob.


what does the ia64 porters say about this? Is ia32-libs on ia64
completly useless and just dead weight? As maintainer I wouldn't mind
dropping the ia64 parts of the package.

MfG
        Goswin