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 that correspond to the nine hardware platforms supported. The standard names of the platforms are:

alpha

Hewlett-Packard's Alpha workstations

arm

ARM processor-based computers and embedded devices

cris

"Code Reduced Instruction Set" CPUs used by Axis in its thin-servers, such as web cameras or development boards

i386

IBM-compatible personal computers based on 80 x 86 microprocessors

ia64

Workstations based on Intel 64-bit Itanium microprocessor

m68k

Personal computers based on Motorola MC680 x 0 microprocessors

mips

Workstations based on MIPS microprocessors

mips64

Workstations based on 64-bit MIPS microprocessors

parisc

Workstations based on Hewlett Packard HP 9000 PA-RISC microprocessors

ppc

Workstations based on Motorola-IBM PowerPC microprocessors

s390

32-bit IBM ESA/390 and zSeries mainframes

s390 x

IBM 64-bit zSeries servers

sh

SuperH embedded computers developed jointly by Hitachi and STMicroelectronics

sparc

Workstations based on Sun Microsystems SPARC microprocessors

sparc64

Workstations based on Sun Microsystems 64-bit Ultra SPARC microprocessors