The Linux / ia 64 Project : Kernel Design and Status Update

The IA-64 architecture co-developed by HP and Intel is going to reach market in the second half of 2000 with Itanium as its first implementation. All the major industry players have endorsed this architecture and nowadays most of the specifications are public. To provide for early availability of Linux on this platform, the port started over two years ago at HP Labs and grew to become an industry wide effort. A major milestone was reached earlier this year, when the entire source code produced to support this new platform was released to the Open Source comunity. In this paper, we describe some of the key system architecture features of IA-64 and the major machine dependent kernel subsystems. We also give a brief update on the application level developments including the software development kit for Linux/ia32 recently released.