AMD64 Port
- Debian on AMD64
- Current Status
- A complete 64bit userland
- Minimalistic AMD64 runtime support for i386
- Mailing List
- Public machines
- Links
Debian on AMD64
This page is meant to assist users and Debian developers running Debian GNU/Linux on the AMD64 architecture. Here, you will find information about the current status of the port, which machines are publicly accessible by developers, where to discuss development of the port, where to get further information about Debian porters, and pointers to more information.
Current Status
AMD64 has been an officially supported Debian architecture since the release of Debian 4.0 (etch).
The port consists of a kernel for all AMD 64bit CPUs with AMD64 extension and all Intel CPUs with Intel 64 extension, and a common 64bit userspace.
A complete 64bit userland
The AMD64 port is thoroughly 64bit, allowing the user to benefit from all advantages this architecture has compared to i386:
- no memory segmentation into low and high memory
- up to 128TiB virtual address space per process (instead of 2GiB)
- 64TiB physical memory support instead of 4GiB (or 64GiB with the PAE extension)
- 16 general purpose registers in the CPU instead of 8
- gcc defaults to SSE2 math instead of 387 FPU
- gcc omits frame-pointers by default at -O2
- compilation time optimization uses a common base for AMD64/Intel 64 instead of legacy i386 cruft
- memory pages are not executable by default
Native execution of legacy 32bit binaries is supported by the kernel, and core libraries needed are provided via Debian's Multiarch mechanism.
Minimalistic AMD64 runtime support for i386
The official i386 distribution actually includes minimalistic AMD64 support, consisting of a 64bit kernel, a toolchain able to create 64bit binaries and the amd64-libs package to run third-party amd64 binaries with native shared libraries.
Mailing List
Discussions and development for this port take place on the debian-amd64 list.
Public machines
All Debian members can port packages using the Debian porterbox machines.