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
Get Understanding the Linux Kernel now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.