GCC 15 to keep Itanium support for now, after all
- Reference: 1730480472
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/11/01/gcc_15_keep_itanium_support/
- Source link:
The development team of the GNU Compiler Collection has [1]accepted a code patch from hero developer René Rebe of Berlin-based [2]ExactCODE , with the crowd-pleasing announcement:
The following un-deprecates ia64*-*-linux for GCC 15. Since we plan to support this for some years to come.
All right, it may be a very small crowd, but the point stands. As such, we are happy to issue a correction for our [3]April article : GCC 15 will still support building programs for Itanium boxes. So long as they are running Linux, anyway; if you're still on HP-UX or OpenVMS, this is [4]somebody else's problem .
GCC 15 is not out yet; the current version is still [5]GCC 14.2 . Also, this is just the GNU C compiler. It doesn't mean that you can build new versions of the Linux kernel. [6]Kernel 6.7 dropped Itanium support and it still [7]doesn't look like it's coming back .
Intel [8]stopped making IA-64 processors years ago, and even stalwart supporter HP no longer sells new Itanium-based hardware, but if you have some of them still in production and running Linux, then GCC will still be able to compile binaries for them.
[9]GCC 15 dropping IA-64 support is final nail in the coffin for Itanium architecture
[10]PumpkinOS carves out a FOSS PalmOS-compatible runtime environment
[11]Virtually and actually, LXC 6 and Incus 6 are here – both LTS versions
[12]GNU Compiler Collection 15 ushers Xeon Phi and Solaris 11.3 to silicon heaven
What would be even more useful, we suspect, would be a FOSS emulator that could run IA64 virtual machines. (Not to be confused with "x64" or "i64", both of which we've seen used as vexatiously ambiguous shorthands for x86-64 or AMD64). IA64 emulation has been done in the past, for instance by [13]Simics [PDF]. There's also a partial CPU emulation in the form of HP's [14]"ski" instruction set emulator , and there is limited [15]guidance on using it. There's also an [16]emulator for Windows binaries . We reckon there's potential here for any emulation fans to win (very limited quantities of) fame and acclaim.
Bootnote
This is not the first correction to our earlier story: initially, we misread the announcement as applying to GCC 14, which we corrected to GCC 15.
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git;a=commitdiff;h=452b12cea8869f120e7c703577c4270476fe6b76
[2] https://exactcode.com/about/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/gcc_15_sinks_itanic/
[4] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Problem_Field
[5] https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-14/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/30/linux_kernel_6_7_rundown/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/21/saving_linux_on_itanium/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2019/02/01/intel_kills_itanium_again/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/gcc_15_sinks_itanic/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/11/pumpkin_os_foss_palmos/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/10/lxc_6_and_incus_6/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/23/gcc_15_nukes_larrabee/
[13] https://www2.cs.sfu.ca/CourseCentral/886/fedorova/Tools/Simics-old/simics-3.0.23/doc/simics-target-guide-ia64.pdf
[14] https://github.com/trofi/ski
[15] https://slyfox.uni.cx/ia64/
[16] https://github.com/itanium64/Rosalia64
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The Itanium architecture was essentially built with the motto: Just ship it, we'll fix it in post. But the amazing compilers that would save us from the sinking ship just never appeared.
Anybody here still running Itanium CPUs and care to explain why? I installed/maintained one Itanium HP-UX system years ago, but that was just a stop-gap meant to be used for a couple years while the application was ported and QA'd. The writing was on the wall pretty early on that it wasn't going to be around long, so a terrible ecosystem to start to buy into.
If you need higher single-core speeds or better RAS than x86-64, IBM/POWER seems to be the only option left. Their exorbitant prices for equipment and support keeping them afloat despite [1]ever-declining market share .
Though the later would be easily solved if if Dell/HP/etc servers had a BIOS option to run CPUs in a "mirror mode" the way they allow you to do so with RAM... Cheap commodity servers could have the best RAS around.
[1] https://www.itjungle.com/2021/01/25/taking-the-full-measure-of-power-servers/
"Though the later would be easily solved if if Dell/HP/etc servers had a BIOS option to run CPUs in a "mirror mode" the way they allow you to do so with RAM... Cheap commodity servers could have the best RAS around.
We are using VMware Fault Tolerance for some specific workloads which in effect mirrors the CPUs and memory of VM's between hosts. On cheap commodity servers with the mirrored RAM as well.
VMware FT itself requires enterprise licenses so it's not exactly cheap to provide proper RAS for a single system, but if you already have the VMware infrastructure then FT is easy and cheap to implement.
Do other hypervisors provide the same feature? I dunno.
> Now, can someone come up with an emulator for the things, please?
Aren't they dead easy to find for free lying behind most skips?
I have a couple of HP models, actually quite fond of them, just can't really justify running them due to the energy usage isn't great for the performance they output.
No hardware, no OS and no software but still got a compiler
Cheers to the real hero here - René Rebe
"...everyone who's still onboard the Itanic..."
Very nice. Cheers, Liam.