ia64 removal (was: Re: lockref scalability on x86-64 vs cpu_relax)

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hello Ard!

> Can I take that as an ack on [0]? The EFI subsystem has evolved
> substantially over the years, and there is really no way to do any
> IA64 testing beyond build testing, so from that perspective, dropping
> it entirely would be welcomed.

ia64 is regularly tested in Debian and Gentoo [1][2].

Debian's ia64 porterbox yttrium runs a recent kernel without issues:

root at yttrium:~# uname -a
Linux yttrium 5.19.0-2-mckinley #1 SMP Debian 5.19.11-1 (2022-09-24) ia64 GNU/Linux
root at yttrium:~#

root at yttrium:~# journalctl -b|head -n10
Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: Linux version 5.19.0-2-mckinley (debian-kernel at lists.debian.org) (gcc-11 (Debian 11.3.0-6) 11.3.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.39) #1 SMP Debian 5.19.11-1 (2022-09-24)
Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: efi: EFI v2.10 by HP
Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: efi: SALsystab=0xdfdd63a18 ESI=0xdfdd63f18 ACPI 2.0=0x3d3c4014 HCDP=0xdffff8798 SMBIOS=0x3d368000
Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: PCDP: v3 at 0xdffff8798
Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: earlycon: uart8250 at I/O port 0x4000 (options '115200n8')
Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: printk: bootconsole [uart8250] enabled
Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: ACPI: Early table checksum verification disabled
Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: ACPI: RSDP 0x000000003D3C4014 000024 (v02 HP    )
Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: ACPI: XSDT 0x000000003D3C4580 000124 (v01 HP     RX2800-2 00000001      01000013)
Nov 14 14:46:10 yttrium kernel: ACPI: FACP 0x000000003D3BE000 0000F4 (v03 HP     RX2800-2 00000001 HP   00000001)
root at yttrium:~#

Same applies to the buildds:

root at lifshitz:~# uname -a
Linux lifshitz 6.0.0-4-mckinley #1 SMP Debian 6.0.8-1 (2022-11-11) ia64 GNU/Linux
root at lifshitz:~#

root at lenz:~# uname -a
Linux lenz 6.0.0-4-mckinley #1 SMP Debian 6.0.8-1 (2022-11-11) ia64 GNU/Linux
root at lenz:~#

EFI works fine as well using the latest version of GRUB2.

Thanks,
Adrian

> [1] https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/snapshots/
> [2] https://mirror.yandex.ru/gentoo-distfiles//releases/ia64/autobuilds/