The 2.6.17 kernel (released in the past 24 hours) includes a new feature:

X86 “SMP alternatives” (optimizes a single kernel image at runtime according with the available platform)

An artice on LWN.net (http://lwn.net/Articles/164121/) explains what this means. If I understand this correctly it means the kernel can now change itself when it starts, and while running, to cope with different instruction sets in different processors and different hardware changes.

The implications are interesting, no x86, 64, or SMP (etc) kernel versions any more. Just the one version that works over all hardware. This will bring down the work load for those the manage the kernel in the different distributions.

But then again I could be miss understanding the article and talking absolute crap.