Pure 64 bootloaders

[Jim Gifford]

I have been working on a project to create a Pure 64 bit distro of 
linux, nothing 32 bit in the system. I can accomplish that with no 
issues pretty much on all platforms, with the exception of the 
bootloaders. It just seems odd, that all the bootloaders seem to have 
gcc -m32 in their makefiles.

Silo on the Sparc has gcc -m32
Grub on the x86 platforms has gcc -m32

The only one that builds and works is Lilo, which most people are moving 
away from.

So for my question, why does a bootloader have to be 32bit?
Anyone got 64 bit bootloaders for Sparc or x86_64 machines?
Are there technical limitations that bootloaders can't be 64 bit?
If we can't have a pure64 environment, why does the Kernel support it?

Thank you all for taking you time to respond.

--
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Jim Gifford
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