content: add ports.article
Change-Id: I47a1904a6f4f9210f428eb9361559322e2a01f12
Reviewed-on: https://go-review.googlesource.com/c/blog/+/278934
Trust: Russ Cox <rsc@golang.org>
Run-TryBot: Russ Cox <rsc@golang.org>
Reviewed-by: Russ Cox <rsc@golang.org>
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+# Go on ARM and Beyond
+17 Dec 2020
+Summary: Go's support for ARM64 and other architectures
+
+Russ Cox
+
+##
+
+The industry is abuzz about non-x86 processors recently,
+so we thought it would be worth a brief post about Go’s support for them.
+
+It has always been important to us for Go to be portable,
+not overfitting to any particular operating system or architecture.
+The [initial open source release of Go](https://opensource.googleblog.com/2009/11/hey-ho-lets-go.html)
+included support for two operating systems (Linux and Mac OS X) and three
+architectures (64-bit x86,
+32-bit x86, and 32-bit ARM).
+
+Over the years, we’ve added support for many more operating systems and architecture combinations:
+
+- Go 1 (March 2012) supported the original systems as well as FreeBSD,
+ NetBSD, and OpenBSD on 64-bit and 32-bit x86,
+ and Plan 9 on 32-bit x86.
+- Go 1.3 (June 2014) added support for Solaris on 64-bit x86.
+- Go 1.4 (December 2014) added support for Android on 32-bit ARM and Plan 9 on 64-bit x86.
+- Go 1.5 (August 2015) added support for Linux on 64-bit ARM and 64-bit PowerPC,
+ as well as iOS on 32-bit and 64-bit ARM.
+- Go 1.6 (February 2016) added support for Linux on 64-bit MIPS,
+ as well as Android on 32-bit x86.
+ It also added an official binary download for Linux on 32-bit ARM,
+ primarily for Raspberry Pi systems.
+- Go 1.7 (August 2016) added support for Linux on z Systems (S390x) and Plan 9 on 32-bit ARM.
+- Go 1.8 (February 2017) added support for Linux on 32-bit MIPS,
+ and it added official binary downloads for Linux on 64-bit PowerPC and z Systems.
+- Go 1.9 (August 2017) added official binary downloads for Linux on 64-bit ARM.
+- Go 1.12 (February 2018) added support for Windows 10 IoT Core on 32-bit ARM,
+ such as the Raspberry Pi 3.
+ It also added support for AIX on 64-bit PowerPC.
+- Go 1.14 (February 2019) added support for Linux on 64-bit RISC-V.
+
+Although the x86-64 port got most of the attention in the early days of Go,
+today all our target architectures are well supported by our [SSA-based compiler back end](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTMvKVma5ms)
+and produce excellent code.
+We’ve been helped along the way by many contributors,
+including engineers from Amazon, ARM, Atos,
+IBM, Intel, and MIPS.
+
+Go supports cross-compiling for all these systems out of the box with minimal effort.
+For example, to build an app for 32-bit x86-based Windows from a 64-bit Linux system:
+
+ GOARCH=386 GOOS=windows go build myapp # writes myapp.exe
+
+In the past year, several major vendors have made announcements of new ARM64
+hardware for servers,
+laptops and developer machines.
+Go was well-positioned for this. For years now,
+Go has been powering Docker, Kubernetes, and the rest of the Go ecosystem
+on ARM64 Linux servers,
+as well as mobile apps on ARM64 Android and iOS devices.
+
+Since Apple’s announcement of the Mac transitioning to Apple silicon this summer,
+Apple and Google have been working together to ensure that Go and the broader
+Go ecosystem work well on them,
+both running Go x86 binaries under Rosetta 2 and running native Go ARM64 binaries.
+Earlier this week, we released the first Go 1.16 beta,
+which includes native support for Macs using the M1 chip.
+You can download and try the Go 1.16 beta for M1 Macs and all your other
+systems on [the Go download page](https://golang.org/dl/#go1.16beta1).
+(Of course, this is a beta release and, like all betas,
+it certainly has bugs we don’t know about.
+If you run into any problems, please report them at [golang.org/issue/new](https://golang.org/issue/new).)
+
+It’s always nice to use the same CPU architecture for local development as in production,
+to remove one variation between the two environments.
+If you deploy to ARM64 production servers,
+Go makes it easy to develop on ARM64 Linux and Mac systems too.
+But of course, it’s still as easy as ever to work on one system and cross-compile
+for deployment to another,
+whether you’re working on an x86 system and deploying to ARM,
+working on Windows and deploying to Linux,
+or some other combination.
+
+The next target we’d like to add support for is ARM64 Windows 10 systems.
+If you have expertise and would like to help,
+we’re coordinating work on [golang.org/issue/36439](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/36439).
+
