Itanium Architecture for Software Developers
This unique description of the Intel Itanium application architecture helps the software development community to use the power of Intel s new line of 64-bit processors.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Itanium Architecture for Software Developers
Chapter 10: IA-32 Compatibility and Application Execution
Up to this point, we have focused on the 64-bit elements of the Itanium architecture and their intended applications. The Itanium architecture is designed with the additional goal of preserving the existing investment in IA-32 software applications and infrastructure. For this reason, the Itanium architecture provides binary compatibility with the IA-32 instruction set in hardware. In this chapter, we cover the Itanium-based operating environments, the process that one follows to transition between Itanium-based and IA-32 applications, and the mapping of the Itanium processor s application register set to the IA-32 application register set.
OPERATING ENVIRONMENTS FOR ITANIUM -BASED APPLICATIONS
Since Itanium architecture includes binary compatibility with the IA-32 instruction set, the operating system of an Itanium-based computer can run a mixture of IA-32 and Itanium-based software applications. Figure 10.1(a) shows this software environment. The Itanium-based operating system environment is the intended environment for applications on Itanium-based computer systems. To achieve best performance, both the operating system and the applications must be coded with the Itanium instruction set and tuned to take advantage of the enhancements in the Itanium architecture.
Figure 10.1: Compatibility with IA-32 Applications
Broad operating system and application support is in place for servers and workstations based on the Itanium architecture. Many of the industry s leading, high-end operating systems, such as Monterey UNIX , Win64 from Microsoft, and Linux , are planned to be available when Itanium-based computer systems ramp into production. Moreover, leading applications for these market segments are being rewritten to run directly...
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