On Fri, 30 Apr 2004, Ira Abramov wrote: > Someone just asked me and I didn't know what to tell him... > > an Opteron machine, how x86 is it? I understand it's supposed to be > fully backwards compatible. does it mean I can just take an x86 regular > 32 bit kernel and binaries and run on it? is 64bit an option or a must? > how does it mix? can old 32bit binaries run under a 64bit kernel? IS > there already a 64bit opteron kernel? > > Thanks! > Ira. > >
I am testing an opteron nowadays, with Mandrake and a 2.4.19 kernel. So far, I have encountered the following problem when running a 32bit executable: The executable takes ages to start. I try hitting ^c several times. It does not stop the executable. I press ^c and keep it pressed, and finally it stops. I run the exe under strace, to see where it gets stuck. This time it runs like charm. I run it again, without the strace. It runs like charm, a bit (about 15%) faster than the same exe on a 2.4GHz machine (AMD, dual CPU (not that it matters here)) with kernel 2.4.25. I run it again, same results. If I wait some time, I need to go through all of this again (i.e., it gets stuck again). Another course of action I took is the following: Run it and wait a lot - several minutes (for an executable sized about 1M, linked with c and fortran dynamic libraries). Finally, it starts working slowly. I stop the exe. Then I start it again. It runs fast to the point it reached the last time, then continues slowly. Regarding compilation for 64bit: I am still trying. It came with autoconf 2.53, which fails to create the configure script properly on the Opteron. The next mission is to install a newer autoconf version, and try again. If it is of interest, I can post further reports, as I have it now for testing and evaluation for a short time. Orna. -- Orna Agmon http://vipe.technion.ac.il/~ladypine/ ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
