[ale] 64-bit vs 32-bit?

[Ed Cashin]

It makes sense they'd do that.  With PAE being pretty common these
days, it could account for the lack of a user-visible advantage to going
64-bit.

Before tricks like PAE were common and stable, there were some
sacrifices users had to make to use a lot of RAM, but that was around
the turn of the millenium, I think.

On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 2:32 PM, Jim Kinney <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 1:49 PM, Greg Freemyer <greg.freemyer at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 1, 2011 at 9:19 AM, Ed Cashin <ecashin at noserose.net> wrote:
>> > On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 10:10 PM, Robert <rs at ale.spam.futz.org> wrote:
>> >>>The only plus that I have seen it that I can run >4GB RAM. Since I use
>> >>> my
>> >>>machine for editing and mastering audio I find that to be valuable.
>> >>
>> >> I do photo processing. When I had 4gb of ram, I often had to quit my
>> >> RAW
>> >> conversion software to free up memory to run the GIMP. I recently
>> >> upgraded to
>> >> 8gb, and am still running a 32 bit kernel. Now both apps can use up to
>> >> 3.5gb
>> >> of ram each and I can leave them both running. Yay!
>> >>
>> >> So, in response to the original poster: I think that unless you *know*
>> >> you need
>> >> more than 4gb of ram for a single app/process, you should be fine with
>> >> a 32 bit
>> >> kernel, even if you have more than 4gb of ram.
>> >
>> > Is your kernel using PAE?  On the way to the full 64-bit technology,
>> > there were a lot of stepping-stone technologies, and maybe you're
>> > being helped by one.  Just curious.
>> >
>>
>> It may not be easy to tell if you have a kernel from the last couple
>> years.
>>
>> == details
>> opensuse no longer ships a PAE kernel.  All of their 32-bit kernels
>> are PAE enabled.
>>
>> IIRC, it is because the kernel team a year or two ago added some logic
>> to self-modify the assembly of the kernel on bootup.
>>
>> IIRC: If PAE capable hardware is found, then the kernel runs as
>> compiled.  If not, the machine-code is modified to have NOOPs in the
>> PAE code.
>>
>> Since then, opensuse no longer ships a pre-compiled non-PAE kernel.
>
> Fedora also does this and the new RHEL 6 does as well.
>>
>> Greg
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> --
> James P. Kinney III
> I would rather stumble along in freedom than walk effortlessly in chains.
>
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-- 
  Ed Cashin <ecashin at noserose.net>
  http://noserose.net/e/
  http://www.coraid.com/