Return to the Press page

Vyatta – Linux & Open Source Alternative to Cisco – Advanced Routing, Firewall, VPN, QoS..
Free Download ->

LK2008: Embedded and Mobile Linux

LK2008: The values of the Linux community

LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 9, 2008

LWN.net Weekly Edition for October 2, 2008

Weekly edition	Kernel	Security	Distributions	Search
Archives	Calendar	Subscribe	Write for LWN	LWN.net FAQ

What's 64-bit computing to Linux? (News.com)

[Posted April 30, 2003 by corbet]

News.com is running a column on the importance of commodity 64-bit systems. "These two trends--commodity 64-bit architectures and Linux--are intersecting. Five years from today, nobody in IT will be buying 32-bit servers (and maybe not even 32-bit laptops). They will buy 64-bit servers and almost universally run them with Linux." Of course, the optimistic tone may have something to do with the fact that the author is SuSE CEO Richard Seibt.

(Log in to post comments)

Posted Apr 30, 2003 16:07 UTC (Wed) by southey (subscriber, #9466) [Link]

Actually, what AMD has done is provide an affordable stepping stone to 64-bit with extremely competitive performance on 32-bit software, regardless of OS. Contrast a Itanium 2 system of about US$20,000 and a 'similar' Operton server under $10,000 (and one presumes the Althon 64 will be cheaper). So the Operton user is no worse off using 32-bit software while taking advantage of 64-bit software when needed (number crunching, large memory access).

What's 64-bit computing to Linux? (News.com)

Posted May 1, 2003 3:46 UTC (Thu) by delducra (guest, #10439) [Link]

Not to mention the fact that Intel's 64-bit offering is a completely different chip branch (i.e. your 32 bit apps won't run on it) while AMD's offering will allow you to run your exisiting software library.

What's 64-bit computing to Linux? (News.com)

Posted May 2, 2003 0:19 UTC (Fri) by freeio (guest, #9622) [Link]

It will be interesting to watch which 64 bit architectures are ported over time, and which will continue to be supported. As a user of SuSE 7.3 on Sun SPARC Ultra IIi (64 bit) systems, I am fully aware what a fine job SuSE did on this, and now it has been officially unsupported. It is only worth the effort for SuSE if there are enough users.

The only Linux distribution which seems to continue to support 64 bit SPARC now is Debian. The BSDs all seem to be current in their support, albeit without the breadth of hardware support one might wish.

So here is the danger for the user. Do not get caught with 64-bit hardware which is ported and then written off as not a big enough user base to be worth the trouble.

Marty