Is the AMD Opteron with 64 bit Linux stable?

From: Moritz Franosch (mail_at_Franosch.org)
Date: 11/05/03 

Date: 05 Nov 2003 22:18:28 +0100

Hello,

It seems the AMD Opteron or Athlon 64 is a good choice because you get
high performance for a reasonable price and it is possible to use more
than 2-4 GB of virtual memory per process under Linux. However, the
Opteron and Athlon 64 platforms are still young.

Has anyone any experience with the Opteron or Athlon 64 running under
a 64 bit Linux kernel?

If yes, how mature and reliable do you think the gcc compiler (for
C/C++) for 64 bit AMD systems is?

Are there any issues if programs use more than, say, 4 GB of RAM?

How about Linux distributions (e.g. Suse 9.0 for Athlon 64)? Is the 64
bit (SMP) Linux kernel stable?

Do all programs simply run or must many bugs be expected (e.g. due to
sizeof(int)<sizeof(int*) )? If a program does not run when compiled
for 64 bits, you may compile it as a 32 bit program and nevertheless
run it under 64 bit Linux. Are there any problems when running 32 bit
i386 programs under 64 bit Linux on an Opteron or Athlon 64?

Is the hardware around a (dual) Opteron or Athlon 64 stable or prone
to failure?

Where is information regarding running 64 bit Linux under an Opteron
or Athlon 64?

I could test an Opteron with 8 GB RAM recently. Here are benchmarks
http://www1.physik.tu-muenchen.de/lehrstuehle/T35/Rechnerdoku/hint.html

According to the Hint benchmark, a 1.8 GHz Opteron should be about 1.5
times faster than a 2.8 GHz Xeon, independent of the memory regime the
program runs in.

Thank you,

Moritz 

-- 
Dipl.-Phys. Moritz Franosch
http://www1.physik.tu-muenchen.de/lehrstuehle/T35/

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