Re: Drop support for x86-32

From: Chris Friesen
Date: Fri Aug 24 2012 - 12:24:37 EST


On 08/24/2012 10:14 AM, Martin Nybo Andersen wrote:
(And I'm still not sure why one would run 32-bit applications on a 64-bit
architecture...)

There are several architectures (powerpc comes to mind) where 32-bit userspace on 64-bit kernel is the norm because it offers performance advantages due to the smaller pointer size if the process doesn' t need the larger address space. This is the rationale behind the new x32 ABI for x86-64 kernels.

You might also want to run legacy apps (which can't be recompiled) on new hardware.

Chris


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