Where's the OS for Intel's Merced?
THE SITUATION SEEMS UNTHINKABLE, given that Intel and its software partners have spent four years hailing Merced as the hardware architecture for the next millennium. But as Merced, a.k.a. the IA-64 processor, creeps ever closer, operating-system vendors including Microsoft, IBM and Sun Microsystems are making only plodding progress toward their goals of shipping simultaneously with the oft-delayed chip....
... Like Microsoft, the Trillian Project-a Linux coalition formed by Intel, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Cern, Cygnus, VA Linux and SGI-showed its 64-bit OS running on actual Merced silicon at the Intel Developer Forum.
The group is porting the Linux kernel and related tools to Merced. It plans to release to the open-source community its IA-64 port some time between now and Q1 of 2000, says coalition member Sridhar Chilukuri, director of strategic alliances for VA Linux Systems.
Once Intel lifts its Merced nondisclosure agreements, Trillian plans to put the entire IA-64 Linux source tree on the Web. Then the group will approach Linux founder Linus Torvalds about including its work in the next Linux build.
Still, developers and customers should not hold their breath for a 64-bit Linux distribution from the likes of Red Hat. That's because Red Hat and other commercial Linux developers will need the IA-64 Linux kernel before they can release their own 64-bit builds, Chilukuri acknowledges.
With open source, there is no beta, per se,” Chilukuri explains. We'll be ready with something in Q1, and OEMs and developers will be ready to take it then and work with it. Bugs will get fixed very fast because of the whole open-source process.
Hopefully, the process is fast enough for Intel to find a date to the Merced dance.
msnbc.com
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