[Raion]

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n...-SGI-Altix

Not that later kernel support was anything to write home about. But yeah, end of the line.

For those with IA-64 boxen, I suggest giving NetBSD devs remote access so they can improve ia64 support. You can setup a sort of KVM with an SBC rather easily.

Edit: User K22 informed me that I misunderstood this and it's only the Altix that's no longer supported.

[lunatic]

NetBSD hasn't completed an IA64 port in ages. I wouldn't hold my breath for that.
Availability of hardware also doesn't seem to be much of a problem, because there are so many machines on the used market. There used to be a FreeBSD port, but it died off some years ago. Apparently, nobody is interested in IA64.

[jan-jaap]

The real problem is this: Intel Itanium IA-64 Support To Be Deprecated By GCC 10, Planned Removal In GCC 11. LLVM removed support for IA64 ten years ago.

To get decent performance from the IA64 (or any EPIC architecture for that matter), demands *a lot* from the compiler. Intel expected to tackle this but I think in the end nobody ever did.

What's the point of IA64 for hobbyists anyway? Most of them are obnoxious noisy 19" rackmounts. I'd say the only interesting one is the SGI Prism, and that one is stuck with SLES9 (Linux 2.6.x) if you want graphics.

[lunatic]

There's the HP zx6000, which is quite beautiful and it's rather quiet. HP also sold "office friendly" conversion kits that changed fans and stuff, so you could put some smaller servers in an office environment.

It's my general hypothesis, that computer geeks do not like retro unix hardware the same way they used to in the 1990s and 2000s. The quality of all NetBSD ports has gone down. Back in the days, the slogan was "of course it runs NetBSD". Now, it's really common, that a "supported" system does not even boot, but rather crashes with a kernel panic. I guess there is just no reason to use an old machine in your general life anymore. Even if this old machine is like a dual Itanium system. Not when you could get something like a Raspberry Pie instead to play with. That's why I think the BSD and Linux people do not care so much for old unix platforms anymore. And people, who like the platform, often stick to the proprietary OS.

[K22]

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n...-SGI-Altix

Not that later kernel support was anything to write home about. But yeah, end of the line.

For those with IA-64 boxen, I suggest giving NetBSD devs remote access so they can improve ia64 support. You can setup a sort of KVM with an SBC rather easily.

I realize this is an old thread, but oh well. Linux isn't removing IPF in 5.4. Linux is just removing Altix system support. HPE systems will be unaffected (although I have some doubts about whether an sx3000 system would run Linux to begin with - but an rx2800 or a bl860c should be able to, even with current-generation silicon.)

[Raion]

Huh, well that's good to know. I guess I misunderstood the title, but isn't it true GCC is ending support in the 10.x series?

Also, curious. I know only one other person who calls the IA-64 series "IPF"

[K22]

Huh, well that's good to know. I guess I misunderstood the title, but isn't it true GCC is ending support in the 10.x series?

Also, curious. I know only one other person who calls the IA-64 series "IPF"

Theoretically GCC is dropping it in 11.x, but it hasn't happened yet. If you look at current GCC master, you'll see IPF support is still there.

[Raion]

Alright, thanks for the correction.