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Red Hat Releases x86_64 Technology Preview, GinGin
HTMLSpinnr writes "Red Hat announced today it's release of GinGin64, a "Technology Preview" (read: not beta) of Red Hat's AMD64 technology. You can grab a copy here or at one of Red Hat's various mirrors. Though the version number listed in the release notes is 8.0.95, inside sources say it's based on Red Hat 9 plus some updates."
64bit is not primarily about raw processor speed, it's about being able to address more than 4G of memory. But, FWIW, the AMD chips seem to be a bit faster than the current crop of 32bit chips as well.
I personally ordered two Opteron servers this week. I plan on building an e-mail server and K12LTSP server using modified Red Hat Linux. My findings of success/failure when I figure out AMD64 Linux quirks will be posted to AMDMB.com in the coming weeks. (Also check out our Athlon Linux forum.)
From the AMD64-list discussion so far, there are only a few details:
* Kernel and all applications 64-bit compiled. This includes support for the larger memory address space and 16 registers. (SPEED!)
* AMD64 Linux *can* run 32-bit applications, unfortunately you would need 32-bit shared libraries that were not included in this technology preview. They said that they will be included in a possible future shipping distribution. I personally will try to research how to find/build these 32-bit shared libraries for myself, although I suspect it will show up on amd64-list soon enough.
* Existing 32-bit closed source programs like Macromedia Flash plugin 6.0 for Linux may work with 32-bit shared libraries, but not while running within 64-bit compiled Mozilla. You would need 32-bit compiled Mozilla. Bummer.
OK, it wasn't overheard at Intel. But it should have been.
SPEC2000 scores:
Itanic2/1 GHz.: 810/1174 int/fp
Opteron: 1202/1170 int/fp
The integer score is important for many general-purpose computing tasks, like web serving and database.
Gee, Opteron is MUCH less expensive, performs better, runs up to 8-way with off the shelf components and runs your 32-bit x86 code twice as fast and absolutely compatibly. Let me think about this... ;-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Actually, the biggest speed boost from operating in 64-bit mode comes from the fact that Opteron/Athlon 64 has twice the general purpose and SSE registers, and also is the first AMD processor to support SSE2. The low register count has always been a stumbling point for x86 processors compared to other technologies like the PowerPC, which have many, many more. This is the fastest and most vital memory to any processor so adding more was an awesome decision, but of course they only work in 64-bit mode.
The fact that it's 64-bit will only help you (double the speed, actually) if you're operating on 64-bit variables, which don't come up in general software very much, but are very good for scientific research, simulations, etc.
And yes, you can directly address more than 4GB of memory... in fact each processor has it's own memory controller built in which also adds to the speed a bit and means that in multi-processor systems each processor gets its own bank of DIMMs.
There's a wonderful article over at ArsTechnica which does a great job of explaining all the benefits of the x86-64 technology here.
--Shon