AMD Geodes are 32-bit only. I haven't heard any mention that they will
_ever_ be 64-bit. But, honestly, this and the Via chip aren't really
ever going to be targets for Solaris. That is, they simply aren't (any
substantial) part of the audience we're trying to reach with Solaris x86.
Also, relatively few 32-bit x86 systems can take > 4GB. While many of
the late-model P4 (and all Xeons since the P3 Xeon) chips have the
capability, most of them were married to chipsets which can't take more
than 4GB. On the AMD side, I'm pretty sure only the Athlon MP-series was
enabled for PAE, and only a tiny amount of them were sold.
So, basically, the problem boils down to those with Xeons, a few
single-socket P4s, and some of this-year's Pentium Ds. Granted, this
makes up most of the x86 server market. So, yes, it _would_ be nice to
be able to dump a tuning parameter into /etc/system to fix the cache
starvation (and other related <4GB RAM) problems. However, I have to
say that working with PAE is messy, and, honestly, 64-bit enabled 1U/3U
servers are dirt cheap now. So, while I empathize with the market that
has severe purchasing constraints, I think it's entirely reasonable to
be up front about needing a 64-bit processor for ZFS, _if_ we've
explored expanding the 32-bit environment, and discovered it was too
expensive (in resources required) to fix.
Dell (arrggh! Not THEM!) sells PowerEdge servers with plenty of PCI
slots and RAM, and 64-bit CPUs for around $1000 now. Hell, WE sell
dual-core x2100s for under $2k. I'm sure one can pick up a whitebox
single-core Opteron for around $1k. That's not unreasonable to ask to
get the latest technology.
-Erik
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