hmm
the interview has this bit.
“Although this is a 64-bit core, on day one, we’re only going to be running 32-bit code. We’re still running Raspbian, which is our ARMv6 operating system. There are some benefits from going 64-bit, primarily it brings a broader range of operating systems [onto the Raspberry Pi].” — Eben Upton
Raspbian is not everything. I expect a true 64bit distro, maybe even a raspbian clone, to appear soon.
There’s this bit from the Ars article:
“The main reason we’re excited about Cortex A53 is it’s a better 32-bit
processor [than A7]. You can run in 32-bit mode,” Upton said. 64-bit ARM
processors also support a new ARMv8 instruction set that’s capable of
speeding up both 32-bit and 64-bit operations.
Uh, yeah. It’s 32 more bits, therefore it’s better. Duh.
I’m not sure if what shakes out will end up being 32 or 64 bit(you do tend to pay slightly higher memory costs for 64 bit binaries; and devices that are 64 bit capable and actually offer enough RAM to make 32 bit involve the horrors of PAE are still pretty rare in ARM land); but at least this should allow them to shake off the really freaky “Debian ARM Hard Float; but rebuilt to work on the ARMv6-but-with-HF rather than ARMv7” stuff that the BCM2835 required.
I assume that ‘raspbian’, or an equivalent, will persist as ‘the Debian designed to play nicely with rPis’ but being based on an ARMv8 part; like basically all recent and upcoming ARM widgets, rather than a oddball hybrid, should mean that it is much closer to just being a slightly customized list of default packages, rather than a fairly enormous amount of recompilation. (It will be interesting to see if this advantage turns out to be a disadvantage for users of the older, pre rPi-2, models: even with hard float support, the newer ones are substantially faster; so it is possible, though by no means certain, that interest in maintaining the v6-with-HF stuff might largely evaporate, leaving legacy users to either run older Raspbian builds or the soft float Debian ARM that will run on practically anything; while the people who need the power move on to superior silicon that also has better compatibility with the rest of the universe. Time will tell, I suppose.)
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