Re:IBM ported Go to s390x mainframes
by andrewmunsell on Monday January 11, 2016 @02:39PM
(#10882747)
Apple used to support a "universal binary" format[1] to run a "single" binary on both PPC and Intel processors (as well as 32 bit vs 64 bit). This meant that both the PPC and Intel code was inside the same file, but a specific section of the file was executed based on what architecture the computer was using.
Of course, modern Macs are 64 bit Intel only, so this isn't really necessary anymore unless a developer needs to support older platforms.
Rosetta was cooler. I have an old Mac Pro running some process that was never upgraded.
Interestingly, I've come across multiple computer people who didn't know this basic fact. Hardware engineers, sysadmins and devs who were surprised when I said a binary/EXE for one processor architecture (and hence, machine instruction set) cannot run on another architecture (except for special cases that may exist nowadays, like maybe Apple related to PowerPC vs Intel CPUs?) But even then it is probably due to special extra steps being taken.
Edited to add hardware engineer category.