Linked by Robert Minvielle on Tue 16th Dec 2003 20:00 UTC
This is the second installment of the "Linux on the Opteron, are we ready?" article. Basically, it is a "where are we now?" article, noting that what once did work now does not, and others that did not work now do. The first article was published on OSNews almost three months ago. Since that time not too much has happened publicly in regards to the amd64 Linux situation, but a lot of people mailed to tell me that I should have checked out SuSE or the new Mandrake which was "about to be released" at that time. Also since that time I have upgraded the RAM and acquired a larger hard disk for the machine. I will give a brief rundown of the system as it stands now, what I tried to install on it, and what works.
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I've been very interested in finding out generally how well SuSE 9.0 runs on AMD 64 bit systems. My most major concern has been their implementation of a 64 bit architecture - looks great on paper, but I'm much more interested in the capabilities in practice over paper. Planning for the future is great - but with the majority of apps run on the AMD64 chips being 32 bit, the AMD64 is largely unproven on the grand scale in my eyes. Ever the skeptic:)
That said, I have a great deal of faith in AMD for producing a solid product. I guess it's just that the 64 bit side of the new chips are something of a hocus-pocus black box sales pitch at this very moment... and I'm very, very curious to find out what advancements will come from 64 bit computing over 32 bit with regard to AMD's 64 bit architexture. After all - according to paper anyway - they did much more than just extend the 32 bit instruction set. Can anyone comment on applications compiled in 64 bit for AMD on a somewhat technical level? Especially under SuSE 9.0? I'm curious about any latency issues - positive or negative, how well GCC takes advantage of the new registers, any issues with ram < 4gb, any heat/power issues in 64 bit vs. 32 bit mode, overall stability of the system, etc... In a nutshell - anything wrong with the chip itself, or unexpected or extreme boosts/slumps in performance.
Ahem:) Atm my focus is the chip. Motherboard/Driver issues I expect will get ironed out quickly enough - but anything inherently wrong with the processor itself, or even just not up to par with expectations (and thus no real incentive to migrate) is of great concern to me. That's why so much interest in SuSE's performance -as afaik it is the best running OS on AMD's 64 bit architecture.
Anyway, sorry for rambling. Thanks in advance for any information you can provide, and thanks again for the article - which provided me with some very helpful information in itself.