Re: [Swarm-Support] 64-bit processors

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Steve Railsback wrote:

> I was just at a party and everyone told me I should get one of the new 
> 64-bit Athlon processors to make Swarm run fast. Apparently there are 
> some 64-bit Linux distributions available/evolving?? Aside from the 
> need to get less-geeky friends, the main issue seems to be whether 
> there is a 64-bit compiler for Obj-C.
>
> Does anyone know what the status is?

Sure, the code in CVS builds in the usual way on Fedora Core 2 or Redhat 
Enterprise 3.  I use it frequently for large simulations.
There's less point in Athlon 64 systems compared to Opterons since the 
former systems aren't set up to physically support more than 4GB RAM 
(usually 2 or 3), and you could get that anyway on a 32 bit system.  
Opteron systems are a little more expensive, but still not bad.  Those 
systems can be loaded up with 16 or 20 GB of real memory if you want.  
Also interesting are the new 64 bit Xeon systems.  They supposedly have 
better floating point performance than Opterons.  I don't think it is 
true that Athlon 64s or Opterons are clearly all-around faster than 
Pentium 4s or Xeons.  It depends on the application.  The big win for 
Athlon 64 / Opterons are for memory intensive applications as the CPU 
has a built-in memory controller.

Also, supposedly the next release of MacOS X will finally have 64 bit 
support.  By then there may be more >= 2.5 Ghz G5s around with 
performance that is close to competitive to Intel architecture systems.  
If you're in to that sort of thing..

Finally, supposedly there are some affordable Power 5 IBM systems soon 
to be available (running Linux).  Right now, the Power 5 benchmarks are 
ahead of everyone.