> On Thu, 22 Jan 1998, Gabriele Paciucci wrote:
>
> > Dear linuxers,
> > the thread about the wishlist is great, but I think that a big problem is
> > if WE ARE READY FOR THE 64BIT INTEL ARCHITECTURE.
>
> Ready for a chip whos design is not yet finalized, much less available?
Really early hardware usually exists in the form of a software simulator.
I remember on case at IBM where as parts of the chip became available, the
simulator would transfer in chip state, drive the chip, read out the
state, and then resume the simulation.
Ideally, you could run a compiler or a full operating system on the
simulator. Of course it might take many hours of elapsed time for even
simple activity. The compiler could be a cross compiler with the resulting
object fed into the simulator.
john alvord