On Fri, 20 Aug 1999, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> > On Fri, 20 Aug 1999, Thierry Vignaud wrote:
> > Power(maybe not the recent ones). So what. The linux hobbyist can run on
> > a cheap 4GB or less intel, if you need a professional system, just use
> > another architecture. As all uses plain C(++) paradigm and Unix, it's not
>
>
> Man O' Man!!!! You really can't mean this. You are relegating
> linux to the hobbiest market with statements like this. It is clear
> that to compete in the commercial marketplace, you have to provide
> what the customer wants, not what you think the customer needs. If
> the customer is Informix, for instance (just try to tell <name db company>
> they need to rewrite their application because linux won't support PAE
> because someone thinks it is ugly).
(This is all strictly my opinion with no facts to back it up :-)
Well, I don't know. One of the reasons, if not the reason, that
"segmented" memory was devised was because of the lack of support in
the CPU itself (not enough bits in pointer registers) for flat memory
models. If we had 32 bit CPU's back when the PC first came out I can
almost garentee that we would not have "64K segments." But, there was
not another (financially feasible) alternative available.
We have 64 bit CPUs available (cheaply) NOW. There's the Alpha,
UltraSparc, and PPC (64bit version may not be "cheap" quite yet) at
least. There is NO REASON to stick with 32bit Intel architecture if
your requirements dictate over 4GB RAM in a system. Besides, you're
Intel anal then the Merced is supposed to come out Real Soon Now. I'd
think that by the time any applications that REALLY needed over 4GB RAM
were ported that the chip would be available.
Given the horrendous rut the whole industry got stuck in by being
forced into segmented architecture computers and the fact that we are
still trying to "get out" of that rut once and for all, I would gladly
support the "no segmented architecture in Linux" vote (if there was
such a vote)..
Oh, and it's not "relegating Linux to the hobbiest market" by not
supporting "ugly" interfaces. No one said work could not be done to
develop/improve support for >4GB RAM support on machines that are
properly architected to support that much RAM (i.e., a 64bit
processor). The great thing is that Linux can run on multiple
platforms and has varying feature sets for each architecture.
Commercial corporations would be >stupid< to ignore the non-Intel
hardware when considering Linux application ports.
Just my 2 cents...
fwr
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/