Andrew Rawnsley, wearing his RISC OS Developments hat, will be the guest speaker at the next Wakefield RISC OS Computer Club (WROCC) meeting, which takes place on Wednesday, 2nd September, and he will be talking on the subject of 64-bit.
RISC OS itself is currently a 32-bit operating system, with the code that makes it up running in the ARM 32-bit architecture, AArch32. For some time now, newer ARM CPUs have had a 64-bit architecture, AArch64, and with it a new instruction set – and the wider ARM-based world has been transitioning to that architecture and instruction set.
With a large proportion of RISC OS having been written in assembler, that means to be able to run on 64-bit processor all of that code has to be rewritten using the new instruction set – and that is no easy task, but not an impossible one. Indeed, there are already a number of different projects underway from different people to try to move RISC OS towards a 64-bit future.
With this talk, Andrew will aim to simplify and explain the difficulties, and how we can work together towards that future, using a demonstration here and there to help make things clear, and also interesting to watch.
He will also explain why any work towards making RISC OS 64-bit doesn’t have to negatively affect ongoing work on the 32-bit versions of RISC OS we are currently enjoying.
And, given time, he may also cover a range of other topics, which may or may not include something hinted at in Martin Eastwood’s talk a few weeks ago, which is now available to watch on YouTube.
The meeting will take place on Wednesday, 2nd September, with a kick off time of 7:45pm. Like all WROCC meetings, it will be held online using the Zoom video conferencing system, allowing you to join from the comfort of your own home.
The only requirements for attendance are a system on which Zoom can be run, and the meeting credentials. These remain the same as previous meetings, so if you’ve attended any recent monthly WROCC meetings you should have them, but if not they can be obtained by contacting the group – ideally by the end of the day before.
Although the meeting is open to any RISC OS user, regardless of WROCC membership status, it’s well worth supporting the group by joining; the cost is just £10 each year, and you get the group’s self-titled monthly newsletter sent to your inbox as a PDF file, along with access to their online discussion forum.
You can also find recordings of previous meetings on YouTube, linked from the Meetings page on their website.
