[Beowulf] [craig.hunter at nasa.gov: Re: Intel?]

[Franz Marini]

On Thu, 2005-06-09 at 06:25, Jim Lux wrote:
> WinXP and Win2K aren't all that hardware dependent at the lower levels.
> There's a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) in the OS that separates all the
> icky interface details. Assuming your source code compiles for x86 with the
> API and libraries, it will run just fine, regardless.

True. For the OS. But you have to take into account the drivers,
specialty code that makes direct access to the underlying hardware
bypassing the HAL, and so on. Whereas there is indeed little code such
as that, it is true that most firms won't be willing to rewrite (or
modify) their drivers specifically for a *single* architecture (that is,
Apple/x86).

Dunno, I don't see neither Microsoft, nor most of the add-on cards
manufacturers out there willing to spend time to port anything to a new,
niche-market, architecture, when there is a well established one already
based on x86...

Maybe I'm wrong, at this point in time, they're almost all only
speculations. Time will tell :)

Franz



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Franz Marini
Sys Admin and Software Analyst,
Dept. of Physics, University of Milan, Italy.
email : franz.marini at mi.infn.it
phone : +39 02 50317221
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