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Clearly Linus and the maintainers of those architectures care enough not to break them (and those architecture maintainers have enough clout to be taken serious

Clearly Linus and the maintainers of those architectures care enough not to break them (and those architecture maintainers have enough clout to be taken seriously). How old does a CPU need to be in order to no longer be supported? The 32-bit x86 architecture is nearly 40 years old - should it be retired for being too old?

dspillett 3y ago
> The 32-bit x86 architecture is nearly 40 years old - should it be retired for being too old? Parts of it already are, from a Linux point of view anyway. It looks like the mainline kernel will drop support for 486 family chips after 6.x, and support for the 386 was dropped in 3.8 (back in 2012). Some distributions already don't release a version for 32-bit-only intel/amd architectures. It'll be a long time before x86 support is dropped in its entirety, but even today you already have less choice than if you run something not sporting an amd64 or arm compatible architecture.
jorvi 3y ago
> The 32-bit x86 architecture is nearly 40 years old - should it be retired for being too old? I’m sure there is some way to gather architectural usage numbers + their likelihood of upgrading, roll it into a value, and if that value drops below X, that architecture gets left behind. The reason why I mention likelihood of upgrade is that there is a gigantic amount of MIPS routers running Linux, but virtually all of them are stuck on old kernels and very unlikely to be upgraded. I’m sure other architectures have similar snags.
- voakbasda 3y ago
  They mostly run old kernels because their vendors do not keep them up to date, and the community does not have champions willing to upstream support for them. In theory it should still be entirely possible to refresh those devices with a modern kernel and user space. Patches would likely be welcomed upstream as well.
pavon 3y ago
Yeah, it doesn't make sense to talk about the m68k being a 1979 processor, when Motorola continued to develop it and release new chips all through the 80's, and it continued to be used in new Mac and Next computers up through the early 90's. The 80486 would be its peer as far as obsolescence goes, not the 8086. But like others mentioned even the i486 is about to lose Linux support.
cratermoon 3y ago
The PowerPC architecture is 32 years old, yet it still lives in, among other forms, the RAD750, which powers things like JWST, Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, Juno, LRO, and MRO. Reports say the RAD750 costs about $200K US

dspillett 3y ago

> The 32-bit x86 architecture is nearly 40 years old - should it be retired for being too old? Parts of it already are, from a Linux point of view anyway. It looks like the mainline kernel will drop support for 486 family chips after 6.x, and support for the 386 was dropped in 3.8 (back in 2012). Some distributions already don't release a version for 32-bit-only intel/amd architectures. It'll be a long time before x86 support is dropped in its entirety, but even today you already have less choice than if you run something not sporting an amd64 or arm compatible architecture.

jorvi 3y ago

> The 32-bit x86 architecture is nearly 40 years old - should it be retired for being too old? I’m sure there is some way to gather architectural usage numbers + their likelihood of upgrading, roll it into a value, and if that value drops below X, that architecture gets left behind. The reason why I mention likelihood of upgrade is that there is a gigantic amount of MIPS routers running Linux, but virtually all of them are stuck on old kernels and very unlikely to be upgraded. I’m sure other architectures have similar snags.

voakbasda 3y ago
They mostly run old kernels because their vendors do not keep them up to date, and the community does not have champions willing to upstream support for them. In theory it should still be entirely possible to refresh those devices with a modern kernel and user space. Patches would likely be welcomed upstream as well.

pavon 3y ago

Yeah, it doesn't make sense to talk about the m68k being a 1979 processor, when Motorola continued to develop it and release new chips all through the 80's, and it continued to be used in new Mac and Next computers up through the early 90's. The 80486 would be its peer as far as obsolescence goes, not the 8086. But like others mentioned even the i486 is about to lose Linux support.

cratermoon 3y ago

The PowerPC architecture is 32 years old, yet it still lives in, among other forms, the RAD750, which powers things like JWST, Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, Juno, LRO, and MRO. Reports say the RAD750 costs about $200K US