On Thu, 2010-01-21 at 11:34 -0500, Bob McWhirter wrote:
So, we need to be able to map an image somehow desires to run, onto a bag of virtual hardware to execute it.
And the Hardware Profile describes that bag.
I completely agree - I didn't mean to give the impression that we don't need arch in HWP.
It will result in a possible doubling of available hardware profiles, but I don't imagine it will. In Amazon's case, they have exactly 1 low-end profile for 32bit, and everything else is 64bit. I don't see too many 32-bit huge machines with 1TB storage and 16 virtual CPUs.
Even if it does double the number of HWP, I don't think that's a big deal. We'll need a way to express those things in HWP's more concisely, anyway (as was discussed with the memory ballooning that Rimu supports), and in that revamped HWP description, arch will just become an enumeration.
David