linux-kernel - Re: FatELF & patents

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Message-Id: <20091026.145428.127892659.davem@davemloft.net>
Date:	Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:54:28 -0700 (PDT)
From:	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>
To:	raysonlogin@...il.com
Cc:	mouse@...c.ru, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: FatELF & patents

From: Rayson Ho <raysonlogin@...il.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:59:22 -0500

> The patent mentions only one prior art:
> 
> "One prior art attempt to provide a method for providing a single
> application for a variety of architectures and formats is the ANDF
> system, developed by OSF. This is an architecture neutral binary
> format. A disadvantage of this scheme is that it requires conversion
> to the native architecture at installation time."
> 
> I don't think there is anything similar to Apple's fat binary or
> universal binary -- a single executable that can be executed on
> different processor families.

A variant of the Sparc SILO boot loader, called TILO, was
doing this with Sparc Linux kernel images 15 or so years ago.

It packs a 32-bit and a 64-bit Linux kernel into one blob and figures
out which one to actually boot once it figures out what kind of
machine it is executing on.
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