Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Fri, 22 Jul 2005 08:57:32 -0400 | From | Stephen Frost <> | Subject | Re: 10 GB in Opteron machine |
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* Jakob Oestergaard (jakob@unthought.net) wrote: > This is really the clever way to run a 64-bit system - 99% of what is > commonly run on most systems only gains overhead from the 64-bit address > space - tools like postfix, cron, syslog, apache, ... will not gain from > being native 64-bit.
For most 64-bit systems, sure. For amd64 it's a little different because there are additional changes to the architecture (as compared to ia32/x86) which can more than make up for the difference for many applications. Then there's also things like encryption (postfix/tls, apache/ssl, etc) which can benefit greatly from better handling of 64bit (and larger) types.
So, basically, it's not nearly so clear-cut as you portray it. :)
> Solaris has done this for ages - maintaining a mostly 32-bit user space, > a 64-bit kernel, and then allowing for certain memory intensive > applications to run natively 64-bit.
The differences between a 64bit sparc chip in 32bit and 64bit are quite a bit less than the differences between an amd64 chip in 32bit and 64bit. Thus, this makes alot more sense for sparc.
> It's a nice way to run a Linux based system too, IMO.
Perhaps on sparc or mips; it's much less clear-cut on amd64.
Stephen [unhandled content-type:application/pgp-signature] |  |