5. Is everything 64-bit on sparc64, and can I compile 64-bit applications ?
The kernel and kernel modules are 64-bit on sparc64, userland is still 32-bit, and in fact the same as on sparc32. The conversion between native 32- and 64-bit function calls is being done via the kernel. Allthough you can compile a kernel with egcs64, you can't really use this compiler for building 64-bit userland binaries. See also "Why can't I compile certain software on my sparc64 ?" in Section 9.
Best regards,
Knut
Fedora Core 3 on AMD64
Posted Dec 14, 2004 23:38 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
That FAQ entry is grossly outdated. GCC-3.2+ is able to compile 64-bit apps perfectly well on sparc64 (my kernel is compiled with 3.4.3 as are most of the 64-bit apps I use, and none show any ill effects).
I deleted the ancient egcs-19980921.1 compiler nearly a year ago, and haven't missed it once.
I have a number of 64-bit apps and libs here (XEmacs and dependencies, Octave, the backup program dar(1) which eats address space for breakfast), although the majority are still 32-bit (and will stay that way, because 32-bit stuff is generally faster than 64-bit stuff on UltraSPARC because all the instructions and pointers are smaller so it keeps memory fetches down).