Merging i386 and x86_64 architectures

Andi Kleen and Thomas Gleixner had a healthy debate on the potential merging of the i386 and x86_64 architectures. Linus will accept the patches that merge i386 and x86_64 - he is very in favor of seeing them combined. Comments from the PPC and s390 folks stated that the merge of their architectures was very worthwhile. Andi was still vocally opposed to the merger. There was a long and heated debate both before and after Linus's pronouncement. However, the pronouncement was not changed during any of the resulting debate.