Re: Intel Atom Processor

On 2010-02-17 22:23:17 -0600, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
Vincent Lefevre put forth on 2/17/2010 6:21 AM:
On 2010-02-16 09:52:06 -0600, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
As a bonus, due to various architectural reasons I won't delve into,
32bit binaries will usually run slightly faster than the 64 bit
cousins, and they'll take up a little bit less disk space.

No, this depends on the application (and "usually" doesn't mean very
much because applications will depend on what the machine is used
for). And some people would completely disagree with you, e.g.:

Vincent, you're quoting me out of context. Apparently you haven't
read the entire thread. Or you're misquoting me intentionally. I
clearly stated that my comments pertained to a certain application
class on this platform.

AFAIK nothing has been said about such a certain application class.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_32_pae&num=1

These benchmarks are irrelevant to the current discussion. They are
on a capable dual core Intel Core Processor,

I know that the processor is different, but what you said could
be interpreted as a general remark on the amd64 architecture.
Unfortunately you didn't provide any benchmarks yourself. So,
what you said is purely gratuitous.

and the application mix is not the same as that of an average Atom
user.

The OP isn't necessarily an "average Atom user".

There's another point is favor of amd64: floating-point arithmetic.
As SSE is used by default on amd64, FP arithmetic is much cleaner
there in practice.

We all know this already (or at least should). However, again, it's
irrelevant to _this_ thread.

Why?

This thread, and my comments, deal with Atom based systems with less
than 2GB of RAM. This thread is not about 32bit vs 64bit binary
performance in general.

No, this thread is about answering the OP's question, which is:

Which architecture should I use for an Intel Atom Processor?

Also, the FP behavior is *not* binary performance.

It's about 32bit vs 64bit binary performance on the Atom processor
and the bulk of applications that users will run on such a platform
daily, which basically includes only these two apps:

1. Web brower
2. Email client

The OP did *not* say that he would use only these two applications.
Anyway, even a web browser is affected by the x86 FP behavior (at
least under Debian), and any user can be affected by it since users
don't control scripts from remote web sites.

x86-64 optimizations and performance enhancements will rarely be
taken advantage of for this class of machine. FP (SSE/SSE2) isn't
going to make a lick of difference.

Wrong! See

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=309797

for instance (this is for Mozilla, but Iceweasel on Debian/stable
is affected too -- I could test it).

--
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@xxxxxxxxxx> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arénaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)


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