Porting my application from PA-RISC to Itanium

[Kevin Bingham]

I am starting to look in to the requirements for changing our HP-UX ported application from PA-RISC to Itanium. I have a few questions:
1) Can loadmodules and libraries built on a PA-RISC machine run on an Itanium machine, if not what changes are needed?
2) If I have the source code forthe application, do I need to prepare an itanium-specific version of the object code (on the PA-RISC machine), or can I get the same object code to run on both platforms?
3) Would the simplest solution all-round be to get myself an itanium machine and do a platform specific build on each machine?

I have to have the ability to support my customers and their various transition plans (some immediate, some slow).

Thanks in advance for helpful answers.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Kevin:

Here's some information to start from:

http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-60130/Aries.5.html

www.hp.com/go/aries

Regards!

...JRF...

[Kevin Bingham]

Thanks JRF, I should probably have added that I work for an ISV and we currently have an L1000, and do NOT have any Itanium machines. At least one of our customers is looking to run our s/w on Itanium within 6 months (due to their own upgrade plans).

If I understand it correctly, Aries is a RISC emulator that runs on Itanium hardware... which doesn't help my specific situation.

[Steven Schweda]

> [...] which doesn't help my specific
> situation.

Why not?

1. PA-RISC object code can't run on an IA64
system (unless you use a PA-RISC emulator).
Different instruction sets, architecture, et
c.

2. Rather depends on the source code, don't
you think? With enough "#if" directives,
most C code can be built anywhere.

3. Most likely. Avoiding emulation tends to
improve performance, too.

[Kevin Bingham]

Thanks for the replies.

[rick jones]

I'm not a compiler guy so I have no idea if there is a way to generate IPF (Itanium/Integrity) binaries with a compiler running on a PA-RISC system, but my suggestion would be to go ahead and get a small Integrity system - ideally a current rx2660, or you could get a second-hand rx2620 or rx2600 or even rx1620 (heck, or even rx1600) and compile native Integrity Itanium binaries there, using the same source code you compile for PA-RISC on your L1000.

In other words, my suggestion is option 3.