<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">Well I'm there I will let you all know how it is going.<br><br>David <br><br><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;">----- Original Message ----<br>From: Dan Pritts <danno@umich.edu><br>To: MDLUG's Main discussion list <mdlug@mdlug.org><br>Sent: Friday, November 9, 2007 11:45:25 AM<br>Subject: Re: [mdlug] opensuse 64 bit vrs 32 bit advantages speed etc.<br><br>
On Fri, Nov 02, 2007 at 11:01:31AM -0400, Raymond McLaughlin wrote:<br>[aaron kulkis quoted too]<br><br>> > 4) buy 64-bit hardware, install 64-bit OS and run<br>> > both 32-bit and 64-bit code.<br><br>> Option 4 is a available on *some* Intel 64 bit processors.<br><br>Any 64-bit intel CPU you'd buy in a "PC" would qualify. You'd have<br>to go way out of your way and pay a lot more money to buy an Itanium.<br><br>Core 2 Duos are 64-bit; "Core" (what you might think of as "core 1")<br>CPUs are not.<br><br>There are 64-bit versions of the pentium 4 & celeron, as well as<br>Current xeons are, I think, core2-based. some of the older p4-based<br>Xeons. Current xeons are, I think, core2-based.<br><br>The relevant intel marketing word is "EM64T".<br><br>> My off the cuff recollection is that when Intel first entered the 64
bit<br>> market their product, codenamed Itanic^h_um was a fresh new
architecture<br>> with no backwards compatibility, and thus unencumbered with concerns<br>> about supporting legacy code.<br><br>It is not compatible with x86 but it might be with HP PA-RISC. Not
sure;<br>but the architecture comes out of work done originally at HP and it was<br>certainly the market successor to PA-RISC.<br><br>A relevant intel marketing word for Itanium is "IA64".<br><br>> > Basically, the 64-bit platform is not yet ready for<br>> > general purpose computing -- it fulfills certain<br>> > niche areas (massive finite element analysis,<br>> > extremely large database operations, etc) but has<br>> > not yet been completed in many areas.<br>> > <br>> > Even on AMD-64 chips, which can run 32-bit code<br>> > in a 64-bit platform (the only CPUs I know of which<br>> > are capable of doing this), there are currently<br>> > a lot of problems still.<br>> > <br>> > Unless you have some bleeding-edge NEED for<br>> > 64-bit code, my advise is to wait until this<br>> > mess is all sorted out -- it's probably going<br>> > to take another 12 - 24
months. Personally, I<br>> > don't need the frustration, and NOTHING that I<br>> > do would benefit significantly from 64-bit install,<br>> > but a lot would be degraded significantly if I<br>> > were to go that route at this time.<br>> <br>> I disagree with this assessment. I would have had more validity 18<br>> months ago but the software has matured in that time, and of late you<br>> would really need to go out of your way to buy a 32 bit machine, eg<br>> closeouts and refurbs. Aguablu good enough for now, but also closer
to<br>> the end of its life cycle and support cycle.<br>> <br>> And on a x86_64 machine you could install 32 bit everything and be<br>> happy, or provided your distro carefully (I can vouch for openSuSE)
you<br>> can install 64 bit and be just as happy and arguably better off for<br>> having made the transition.<br><br>Red Hat supposedly does a good job of including 32-bit compatibility<br>libraries too (I know I install lots of compatibility libs on my<br>servers but i generally run native 64-bit code). I think windows<br>does OK too but I'm sure there are exceptions.<br><br>There are a few other enhancements that were made in the AMD64<br>architecture that can help beyond the extra address space. The one<br>that comes to mind is that they doubled the number of CPU registers;<br>i've read that x86 is "generally felt to be a register-starved<br>architecture" so this could be a help. Certainly for many benchmarks<br>it doesn't seem to matter. However, this supposedly helps Java<br>performance a lot, and maybe better compilers will help in teh future?<br><br>Personally, I'm with Aaron - for the desktop I wouldn't bother
with<br>a 64-bit OS today, unless i had need & budget for huge amounts of<br>memory (photoshop or video editing come to mind). <br><br>But of course Raymond is right, there's not much choice other than<br>to buy 64-bit CPUs.<br><br>danno<br>--<br>dan pritts<br><a ymailto="mailto:danno@umich.edu" href="mailto:danno@umich.edu">danno@umich.edu</a><br>734-929-9770<br>_______________________________________________<br>mdlug mailing list<br><a ymailto="mailto:mdlug@mdlug.org" href="mailto:mdlug@mdlug.org">mdlug@mdlug.org</a><br><a href="http://mdlug.org/mailman/listinfo/mdlug" target="_blank">http://mdlug.org/mailman/listinfo/mdlug</a><br></div><br></div></div><br>__________________________________________________<br>Do You Yahoo!?<br>Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around <br>http://mail.yahoo.com </body></html>