Linux and Processor architecture
 

I am no hardcore computer genius so pardon me if I sound weird. I wish to know what you guys do when a new processor architecture is released Say AMD64. I guess you must have Gcc coded for the new architecture and use it to compile the kernel and other packages from source. What can you say ? Will this procedure utilize the features of the new architecture with no change in application code ?

This is what Linus Torwalds spends most of his time doing - tweaking kernels to utilise new architecture. This is a complex field. The developers and maintainers of popular packages would have to recode there software to utilise new generation hardware which would have to be both 32 and 64 bit compatible.

If you're really interested on a code-level, checkout /usr/src/linux/arch. That is where any architecture-specific code is stored and if you knew what you were looking at (I don't ;)) I'm sure it would be very interesting, I wish I had the time to learn C and ASM to that level.