Google engineers have been beavering away at a 64-bit version of the company’s Chrome browser for the Linux platform.

According to Chrome developer Dean McNamee, Mountain View’s V8 team has been tinkering with a Chromium Linux 64-bit for several weeks now. V8, in case you were wondering, is the web kingpin’s JavaScript engine.

McNamee said in a mailing list post yesterday that Google had done “some amazing work this quarter building a working 64-bit port.”

Google has shared instructions with programmers to build a 64-bit version via Chromium, its open source browser project.

Some might be surprised to see Google forging ahead with the Linux rather than Windows platform when it comes to developing a 64-bit version of the browser.

A post on the Chromium mailing list, penned by Marcus Greenblatt asked: “Out of curiosity, what work remains to support a 64-bit build on Windows?”

Google’s initial response from programmer Marc-Antoine Ruel was to declare a need for “motivation”, some “sandbox fixes” and a “gyp update.”

Later in the mailing list Mountain View’s Mads Sig Ager clarified that “V8 does not yet compile in 64-bit mode on Windows.”

Instead, this time around at least, Google has “focused on making the 64-bit version of V8 work on Linux and Mac at first.”

Programmers can grab the instructions here, and Google's mailing list is here.