Re: problem installing fedora 2 x86-64 on a intel xeon 64 bits

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To: For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list@redhat.com>
Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 21:07:09 -0500

On Tue, 2004-07-06 at 18:19, James Wilkinson wrote:
> ne wrote:
> > Seems I stand corrected. I did some Googlle research myself and saw
> > http://www.pcpro.co.uk/?http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/news_story.php?id=59918.
> > I quote:
> >
> > 'With its newly announced 'Nocona' Xeon processors - which clock
> > speeds ranging from 2.8 to 3.6GHz - Intel brings 64-bit memory
> > addressing to its 32-bit server processor. The aim is to provide
> > greater support for the high-level number crunching tasks of the
> > workstation market.'
> >
> > So I guess the question becomes do FC kernels have support for
> > this chip yet?
>
> Jeff Vian objected:
> > This is 64bit memory addressing on a 32bit processor. This is PLAINLY
> > stated above. It is not likely the 64bit kernel will work.
> >
> > I also would guess the chipsets to support that are very new.
>
> Umm ... no. And yes.
>
> Decoding Intel statements is often an artform.
>

So you are saying they are spinning it, masking the true capabilities?
Or are they spinning it, trying to say it does something it doesn't. I
am confused, and so I stick with AMD as a rock solid workhorse.

Rereading the info above it seems that even if this is a 64bit chip the
kernel does not see it as 64 bit so ......

> In this case, Intel has literally spent billions of dollars on its
> Itanium range, and billions more on support for it. Sales have not
> been impressive.
>
> Intel has been carefully attempting to preserve sales on its 32 bit Xeon
> workhorse range (which is extremely lucrative: until last year Intel had
> basically no competition on the PC-based server market except at the
> very low end), while spinning its 64 bit Itanium processor as being what
> you really need if you want real computing power [1] while remaining
> compatible with "the industry-standard 32 bit Intel architecture"[2].
>
> AMD's Opteron has basically spoilt this. It is very competitive with
> Xeon on single-CPU systems, scales much better than Xeon (largely due to
> HyperTransport and the NUMA memory architecture), really has superb 32
> bit performance, and has 64 bit options (with the promise of even better
> performance). So lots of people have been interested.
>
> Intel has responded by adding a (mostly) Opteron-compatible [3] 64 bit
> mode to recent Pentium 4 based processors, and has started turning it
> on in some of the most recent Xeons. It now has a problem: how does it
> advertise its new 64 bit chips without cannibalising sales for Itanium?
>
> Its answer is statements like the one above: it's trying to portray the
> 64 bit mode as solely about letting Xeons efficiently address lots of
> memory, whereas Itanium is still about real power and the future of
> computing, and what you want if you want real 64 bit support. Honest,
> guv.
>
> In fact, although there are areas where Itanium makes sense, the market
> is limited. At the moment, it's largely limited to more than eight-way
> SMP boxes, in roles where they need fast access to shared memory (so
> clustering won't work).
>
> Itanium was supposed to support this market, but it was supposed to do
> so with chips that could be sold in PC quantities, and the forecasts for
> the project assume these economies of scale.
>
> In the real world, the Intel AMD64 compatible processors are just as
> much 64 bit processors as their AMD counterparts.
>
> Unfortunately, there are some hardware level differences between the
> two platforms, which need to be reflected in the way the kernel handles
> them [4]. I know there are patches in the current upstream kernel,
> but I don't know whether they made it to the default x64-64 FC2 kernel,
> nor whether the surrounding software knew about the possibility of
> Intel x86-64 processors. So you're probably right, Jeff: these CPUs
> may not be reliably handled in 64 bit mode until FC3.
>
> HTH,
>
> James.
>
> [1] Until recently this was a joke. These days, Itanium is becoming
> competitive at certain tasks, especially those requiring lots of FPU.
>
> [2] But not if you want any speed out of your 32 bit programs...
>
> [3] It's supposed to be as compatible in 64 bits as it is in 32 bits:
> at the moment, AMD doesn't have SSE3, while Intel doesn't have 3D-Now.
> This is reputedly at the insistence of Microsoft, who didn't fancy
> having to port to *four* processor families...
>
> [4] For example, Intel chipsets also don't have the IOMMU that 64 bit
> AMD CPUs have. This isn't strictly an instruction set compatibility
> issue, but the IOMMU is supposed to be very handy in supporting existing
> hardware on systems with more than 4 GB of memory.
>
> --
> E-mail address: james@ | "Come on, son, give us your best shot."
> westexe.demon.co.uk | -- Goliath
>

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