IBM Itanium Based Systems and Linux

ErrantKbd writes "An article at Infoworld discusses IBM's plans to release Itanium-based systems sometime in the January/February timespan. They will be building systems running Windows of course, but also ready-made servers running RedHat, Caldera, TurboLinux, and SuSE. Should be pretty sweet provided everything goes smoothly with the 64-bit processor. Note: there is an error in the article, a 64 bit system can directly address approximately 1 billion times more than the article suggests." Those'll be one helluva desktop box.

Comments

Address space less than 64-bits?

[crow]

The address space may be less than 64-bits wide.

There's a difference between the architecture and the implementation. The architecture may allow for a 64-bit address space, but not require it. In many 64-bit processors, many of the address lines are hard-wired to zero. I would not be at all surprised if this is true for Itanium.

Also, even if the processor actually supports true 64-bit addresses, that doesn't mean the motherboard chipsets will support it. Hence, real systems may be limited in their memory configurations.

Re:Address space less than 64-bits?

[Anonymous Coward]

Itanium reportedly has 44 bits of physical addressing (16TB, just like the article said).

It also has 51 bits of virtual addressing (51 address bits + 3 region index bits). 50 bits of virtual addressing are guaranteed by IA64, implementations are free to implement more.

Most general-purpose 64-bit processors implement between 40 and 44 bits of physical address.

The only 64-bit processor that I know of with a full 64-bit MMU (ie, 64-bit virtual addresses) is UltraSPARC III.

Re:Is 64 bit addressing practical?

[spectatorion]

I know that VA Linux sells some systems that have 16 memory slots (yes, Intel machines!).

here is a link to a HP server that supports up to 128GB of memory in one box. I know it's a high end unix server, but wasn't itanium intel's pathetic attempt to compete with these kind of machines?

then there is the coveted Sun Enterprise 1000 which seems to support up to 68GB of RAM, plus a bunch of others from SUN

Then there is this bad-boy from IBM, which supports up to 96GB

Of course there are the Alpha servers, of which the GS series is an example. Up to 256MB.

There are boards that support way more than 8 RAM slots and have been for some time. Hell, you can get a system that supports more than 16GB from ebay.

PS, anyone who wants to donate one of the linked systems, please reply to this and we will arrange something :-).

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