At its annual TechCon event in Santa Clara today, ARM announced ARMv8, its new 64-bit version of the ARM Architecture. The Fedora ARM community is excited to learn more about the new architecture, and we look forward to supporting ARMv8 in a future release of Fedora. As the 8th iteration of the ARM Architecture, ARMv8 (also known as AArch v8) brings new opportunities to Fedora running on increasingly more powerful ARM machines. At the same time, it retains compatibility at the application level with existing 32-bit ARM software, which is already being built on Fedora 15. Supporting a new architecture takes some time and we have a lot of work ahead of us -- both at the distribution level (bootstrapping, similar to the work recently undertaken for Fedora 15 on ARMv7) and at the wider community level (cross-distribution and industry standardization). All this is in the future – it will take several years before ARMv8 computers can be purchased. In the interim, we've got a lot of work to do to support the existing 32-bit technology in Fedora 15 and beyond. Now is an exciting time to get involved with the Fedora ARM project! To join us, please visit our wiki page, http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM and contribute on IRC: #fedora-arm (Freenode). -- Jon. FAQ: Q: Please clarify some of the terms used to describe 64-bit ARM. A: The name of the new architecture is ARMv8, also known generically as AArch v8. The new Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) is known as A64, and the existing 32-bit ISA will be known as A32 (and T32 for the Thumb instruction set). 64-bit execution mode is known as AArch 64; 32-bit execution mode (ARMv7 compatible) is known as AArch 32. It is proposed that we adopt armv8 as the official architecture name within the Fedora ARM project. Q: When will Fedora support 64-bit ARM processors? A: There is no support currently available in Fedora for the A64 ISA in the core toolchain, kernel, and other distribution-level components required to build ARMv8 packages. Once the necessary support is available in the upstream projects that Fedora relies upon, we plan to support ARMv8 in Fedora. Q: What does this mean for Fedora 15 and soon, for Fedora 16? A: At the moment, nothing has changed. Historically, ARM announces new architecture improvements years before hardware supporting those improvements is available. ARM doesn’t build processors; instead, they license their architecture and processor designs to others. Therefore, it will be some time before 64-bit ARM systems can be purchased, and it will be a while before Fedora runs on those systems. Q: Since Red Hat Enterprise Linux is largely based on Fedora, will Red Hat support ARMv8 in a forthcoming product release? A: There is much work to do in ARMv8 before it would be considered suitable for Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers. Currently, Red Hat’s ARMv8 investments are focused on Fedora, utilizing Fedora’s rapid development cycle to drive and mature these types of emerging technologies. As the ARMv8 technology develops, Red Hat will work to determine ARMv8’s applicability to be a supported architecture within Red Hat Enterprise Linux. _______________________________________________ arm mailing list arm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/arm
