October 2000
Intermediate to advanced
704 pages
18h 13m
English
Content preview from Understanding the Linux Kernel
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1.2. Hardware Dependency
Linux tries to maintain a neat distinction between hardware-dependent and hardware-independent source code. To that end, both the arch and the include directories include nine subdirectories corresponding to the nine hardware platforms supported. The standard names of the platforms are:
arm
Acorn personal computers
alpha
Compaq Alpha workstations
i386
IBM-compatible personal computers based on Intel 80x86 or Intel 80x86-compatible microprocessors
m68k
Personal computers based on Motorola MC680x0 microprocessors
mips
Workstations based on Silicon Graphics MIPS microprocessors
ppc
Workstations based on Motorola-IBM PowerPC microprocessors
sparc
Workstations based on Sun Microsystems SPARC microprocessors
sparc64
Workstations based on Sun Microsystems 64-bit Ultra SPARC microprocessors
s390
IBM System/390 mainframes
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