Re:Future of 32-bit platform support in FreeBSD
by ksec on Tuesday February 20, 2024 @11:44AM
(#39443469)
I think we need to be more specific, since on x86 64bit instructions are a superset of 32bit. On ARM they are different with AArch32 and AArch64 being two separate set of instructions. It is AArch32 that is being dropped and no longer required.
Even that is being phased out, starting from 2021 ARMs reference cores mostly dropped 32-bit support, with the Cortex-X2 big cores and Cortex-A510 small cores being 64-bit only, and only the medium Cortex-A710 cores retaining the ability to run 32-bit code in userspace. With the next generation the medium cores lost 32-bit support, but the small cores gained 32-bit support again, so the chips can barely still run 32-bit code but it's relegated to only running on the least performant cores. I'm sure they'll drop it altogether as soon as they think the market will accept it.