Itanium retired from Linux by Torvalds

Stefan Mileschin · 7th November 2023, 08:56

It was a long time coming

Linus Torvalds removed some 65,219 lines of Itanium-supporting code in a commit earlier this week, giving the architecture a “well-earned retirement as planned.

For those not in the know, Intel’s Itanium chips and their IA-64 architecture have been discontinued since 2021, when the company shipped its last processors, but it has been dying for a lot longer than that.

Intel stopped improving Itanium in 2013, and the last new Itanium CPUs shipped in 2017. In 2020, the last Itanium-compatible version of Windows Server stopped receiving updates.

In 2003, AMD introduced a 64-bit processor lineup that didn’t break compatibility with existing 32-bit x86 operating systems and applications, which helped Itanium’s decline.

Now Torvalds says that the next version of the Linux kernel, 6.7, will no longer support Itanium meaning that all code related to Itanium support is being removed from the kernel.

https://fudzilla.com/news/pc-hardwar...ux-by-torvalds

7th November 2023, 08:56	#1
Stefan Mileschin [M] Reviewer Join Date: May 2010 Location: Romania Posts: 153,575	Itanium retired from Linux by Torvalds It was a long time coming Linus Torvalds removed some 65,219 lines of Itanium-supporting code in a commit earlier this week, giving the architecture a “well-earned retirement as planned. For those not in the know, Intel’s Itanium chips and their IA-64 architecture have been discontinued since 2021, when the company shipped its last processors, but it has been dying for a lot longer than that. Intel stopped improving Itanium in 2013, and the last new Itanium CPUs shipped in 2017. In 2020, the last Itanium-compatible version of Windows Server stopped receiving updates. In 2003, AMD introduced a 64-bit processor lineup that didn’t break compatibility with existing 32-bit x86 operating systems and applications, which helped Itanium’s decline. Now Torvalds says that the next version of the Linux kernel, 6.7, will no longer support Itanium meaning that all code related to Itanium support is being removed from the kernel. https://fudzilla.com/news/pc-hardwar...ux-by-torvalds

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