Ubuntu To Stop Supporting LPIA Architecture

Written by Michael Larabel in Intel on 24 November 2009 at 04:14 PM EST. 8 Comments
INTEL
Two years ago Ubuntu began supporting LPIA, or the Low-Power Intel Architecture. LPIA is i386, but with different compile-time optimizations. LPIA was in use by the Ubuntu Mobile project with Intel's recent mobile CPUs supporting this lower-power architecture. Tests we carried out earlier this year at Phoronix showed Ubuntu's LPIA-based MID spin can conserve 10%+ power. However, Canonical is now abandoning this Intel architecture.

Steve Kowalik has announced on behalf of the Ubuntu development community that the LPIA architecture will be retired due to all the work that's required to maintain this support, Intel's CPUs continuing to work just fine with IA32, and with Ubuntu 9.10 the LPIA and i386 spins are using identical kernel configurations. Additionally, Ubuntu developers want to work towards bringing some of the LPIA optimizations into their i386 packages. Beginning with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and going forward, LPIA packages will not be available.

The LPIA retirement message was announced this afternoon on ubuntu-devel-announce.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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