Showing posts with label 64 bit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 64 bit. Show all posts

Monday, September 15, 2008

64 bit Support

Chromium currently isn't supported by 64-bit platforms. 64-bit support would be nice to do in the future, but there are some hurdles.
Fundamental

* Many binary-only plugins are only available as 32-bit libraries, which means the plugin processes must remain 32-bit. On Linux this is already addressed by nspluginwrapper.

Issues that can more easily be fixed
In descending order of difficulty:

* V8 generates x86 code; it needs to be taught a new architecture. Workaround could be using JSC, but that negates a large benefit of Chromium.
* The Windows Sandbox is very "hardcoded" on the OS structure and native function prototypes. It would require significant work to make 64-bit safe.
* Chromium hasn't been made 64-bit safe. Though it probably isn't too much work, it's not worth doing until the other pieces are in place. This includes making the IPC system cross 64-bit/32-bit compatible for communication with plugins.
* Changing the installer to include both 64- and 32-bit binaries.
* Perhaps other third-party libraries don't work? But most of them are open-source and already work fine on 64-bit Linux.

Source : http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/64-bit-support