Provides a deep technical introduction to the IA-64 architecture and its version of the Linux kernel. Written by research scientists who helped develop the IA-64 platform at Hewlett-Packard, the book begins with the most fundamental components of Linux and how they work on IA-64: the thread interface, the virtual memory system, and the user/kernel boundary. The second half of the book describes stack unwinding, input/output support, multiprocessor support, monitoring system performance, booting, and backward compatibility with IA-32. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)