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Old 25th June 2008
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kienjakenobi kienjakenobi is offline
Kienja
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by adamk
First, IA64 is a completely different architecture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ia64
I see. That makes sense. The ia64 has too many differences to be compared to x86 and x86_64 in this manner. However, by listing ia64 I was just trying to say that an amd64 system should be able to run code written strictly for a 64-bit systems, just as it should be able to run code written for a 32-bit system.

Quote:
Originally Posted by adamk
The kernel module is not open source. It's a small open source wrapper that links to a binary blob. This binary blob is 32 bit.
That should not necessarily mean that it will not work on an amd64 system. There are plenty of 32-bit binary programs that run in amd64. That is precisely why amd64 was made. It is a middle ground between absolute 32-bit and absolute 64-bit. It was made so that people could run the thousands of programs that are currently made only for 32-bit processors, as well as run the programs that lie in the future, 64 bit programs.

Quote:
Originally Posted by adamk
If you really need 64 bit opengl drivers, the open source radeon driver from ports works on r100-r400 cards, and if you compile it from git it works on r500 cards, too.
Yes, but throwing away five hundred dollars and paying five hundred more dollars is not an option for me.
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