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SubjectRe: Linux/IA-64 byte order
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> I've worked at or visited ATNF, AAO, SydUni, UNSW, MSSSO, NRAO, UMN,
> NCSA(Illinois), UCalgary, DRAO, Uni Durham, NFRA, RUG and Uni Bonn and
> with the exception of Uni Bonn, they're all dominated by BE machines.

Uni Durham? How recently? There's a big move in Starlink nodes over to Linux x86 - particualrly for IDL usage (I hate IDL myself.... but never mind). IDL's absurd resource usage kind of makes it too much of a strain on servers (3 users on our 333MHz alpha with 512Meg of memory makes it painbfully slow) and more suited to individual machines.

Anyway... I don't see how you require such huge swapspace - I regualraly work with 2 gig files on my desktop PC with only 64Meg of memory (and 190 Meg swap spread ofver 2 disks). I just never try to mmap teh whole file at once.....

Personally I don't see the preformance difference I just see that it's easier for the application programmer who's dealing with one type of data.

OTOH my data is generated and stored in my own format...

Basically whatever way people go they make it marginally more difficult for certain types of application programmers. Someone always loses out.

So who wins from Little Endian IA64? The Kernel programmers and the Users - the users would prefer a system which was little endian to run all their x86 stuff and teh kernel programmers don't want to have a kernel which isn't sure whether it's big or little endian.

Who wins in teh big endian case... ummm well anyone developing apps which work with FITS files doesn't need to think so hard about internal data management.
OK.. there are a few more data formats... but given that I see plenty of stuff from starlink working perfectly on Alpha's, X86 and Sparcs then I'm not convinced it's that much harder. Starlink supports more little endian thatn big endian architechtures... and it's entire purpose is to produce software to analyse FITS files.



Scott Manley (aka Szyzyg) /------ _@/ Mail -----\
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