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To: Monica Detwiler who wrote (79638)	5/8/2002 8:18:14 PM
From: pgerassi	Respond to of 275872

Oh Monica! Do you know how software is developed? Do you know the difference between source code and executable code? Do you know what an API is? Do you know about SPEC 1170? Source code used with compilers, assemblers and linkers plus a few other utilities like make, create executable code. Many different platforms can be targetted with the same (well written) source code which is referred to as "Portability". API is Application Programming Interface. This interfaces between the OS/platform and applications that need to use those resources. SPEC 1170 is a group of 1170 of these APIs that any OS/platform that uses these to specifications, makes the OS/platform be able to be called a UNIX system. Linux is compliant with SPEC 1170 which means that is satisfies these specifications and thus is a UNIX OS. Any application written for one UNIX system that stays within SPEC 1170 can be recompiled on another UNIX system which also satisfies SPEC 1170. Thus any application 64 bit or 32 bit that runs using SPEC 1170 is able to be recompiled for all UNIX systems. The only difference is that 64 bit applications run much faster on 64 bit hardware than 32 bit hardware, but they do run (disk is used to extend memory beyond 4GB). This is easily shown by the x86-64 simulator. It runs x86-64 software on a IA-32 system, but slowly like Itanium runs IA-32 software. This is easy to see since disk is much slower than main memory and many 32 bit operations need to be performed for each 64 bit instruction. So any UNIX system with SPEC 1170 compliant 64 bit applications can be ported to any other UNIX system and one such is Linux running on Opteron or AXP64 systems in 64 bit mode. Port time between UNIX platforms is measured in days or weeks not the months and years required to switch between Microsoft platforms (this extends even to between versions on the same platform), even if the application developer wants to go through the trouble. Many times it is as simple as running a configure (./configure) program that looks up various definitions, utilities and paths and then starting a "make all", "make dep; make; make install" or using a useful Red Hat software package utility "rpm -i application.rpm". If you do not know these typical Linux building commands, that's ok, you are just not a software developer. So I did not change the subject. What happened was typical, "know it all" Monica doesn't know it at all. Leave such judgements to those who do this for a living. I am one who has over 30 years doing software development including many 64 bit applications which are SPEC 1170 compliant. Pete