Emc works properly on 64-bit and SMP systems. I routinely use and
develop emc on such a system with --enable-simulator (no realtime, no
hardware control).
For realtime hardware control, emc depends on the underlying realtime
system (rtai). In 2007 I did a bit of work in this area, as detailed on
my blog
http://emergent.unpy.net/01180573281
http://emergent.unpy.net/01181319466
but I don't use a 64-bit or SMP kernel on the PC that controls my mill.
Emc doesn't really derive any specific benefits from these systems; it
doesn't need large address spaces, and its CPU usage isn't particularly
high, at least in systems with no base_thread where you're not running a
resource-hungry GUI. Smart I/O boards like pico and mesa, and realtime-
friendly accelerated opengl (if you want to run axis) would be much
bigger contributors to a responsive system than SMP would be.
Ultimately, it's the time to build and test each new platform that keeps
us from offering pre-built packages for every system our users would
like. Building the kernel and rtai are usually more time-consuming than
building emc itself. That leads us to build for a very small number of
operating system releases, and to build with conservative options that
we judge will work on the greatest number of machines. With the next
release we'll probably look at enabling SMP; we know that this will
restrict rtai to working only on systems with APIC, but in 2010 it's
probably only a small minority of machines that don't have APIC. If
testing proves us wrong, we'll take it out and remain restricted to
using a single CPU or core. In another few years, maybe we'll be in a
position to make a similar decision about 64 bits as the standard that
will work on all but a few uninteresting machines.
Jeff
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