On 5/26/05, Chris Boot <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi all, > > I've got a Dell PowerEdge SC1425 with Sarge running on it. > Apparently the box supports Intel's EM64T, but it's currently running > a standard i386 kernel. > > What are the advantages of running an x86_64 / ia64 kernel?
It's amd64 or x86-64. It's basically x86 with 64-bit extensions. IA64 is Itanium - which is a different beast altogether. The most obvious advantage of using the amd64 platform (Intel just licensed the 64bit extensions and rebranded them as EM64T) would be access to more than 4GB of RAM without resorting to slow cheats like PAE. Another would be additional registers which in theory could speed up applications. > Are there any special steps to take to upgrade it? There's no such thing as an upgrade from 32-bit to native 64-bit. You'd need to reinstall the OS. > Can I upgrade the kernel without upgrading the userspace apps? If you'd run in 64 bit mode - No. -- Paolo Alexis Falcone [EMAIL PROTECTED]
