Thanks very much for your answer. I really appreciate it. On Sunday January 21, 2007 9:05 am, Jan Karjalainen wrote:

Stephen P. Molnar, Ph.D. wrote:

...

Although not new to linux I am not a hardware person. I have a rather simplist (perhaps) question. The question is whether 32 bit SuSE will work on a 64 bit CPU?

I am planning on upgrading by linux machine to 64 bits and would like to use the primary master (linux installation only) on the new machine - which would make life considerably simpler for me.

Thanks in advances

Yes, you can run 32-bit SUSE on a 64-bit processor. In fact, one of my machines does just that...

/JK

-- "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." - Jan L.A. Van De Snepscheut

-- Stephen P. Molnar, Ph.D. Life is a fuzzy set Foundation for Chemistry Stochastic and multivariant http://www.geocities.com/FoundationForChemistry -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Randall R Schulz wrote:

On Sunday 21 January 2007 09:44, J Sloan wrote:

...

...

32-bit suse can run on x86_64, but not ia64. It's unlikely that you have ia64 hardware, so the answer is most likely yes.

Just curious why you'd want to do that though.

Possible reasons:

1) Fewer problems with plug-ins. 2) Better performance for many applications or classes of applications.

1. My x86_64 installs defaulted to 32bit browsers, ergo no plugin problems. 2. On my main workstation, glxgears got 10,000 frames/sec with the x86_64 install, and 7,000 frames/sec with the i386 install, a noticeable difference. Being able to move memory around in bigger chunks can really help things like database performance too. *Having* to move data around in bigger chunks might not be as helpful for some scenarios, but I can't think of any. Got a specific example? Joe -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sunday 21 January 2007 10:37, Randall R Schulz wrote:

Remember, too, that every single virtual address synthesized and emitted by the processor is 64-bits wide in a 64-bit mode, and for the large majority of applications, that's a whole lot bits that are always zero being shipped around. Since pointers are common in C, C++, Java, Perl and just about every modern language, there's a whole lot of unnecessary data movement when manipulating these pointers / addresses.

Again: its just plain faster running an x86_64 installation on an x86_64 platform than running a 32bit installation. So all of these horror stories about large pointers are FUD, and completely ignore the fact that the processor does handles those operations in 64bit in the same number of clocks as it does 32bit. Memory fetches in 64bit are also done in the same number of clocks as a memory fetch in 32bit, even though they are twice as many bits wide. So to access or move 32k (or any size) of data from one place in memory to another takes exactly twice as many instructions or iterations thru the loop in 32bit as it does in 64bit. All of Randall's posturing on this issue covers only his narrow set of needs and nothing more. Most of this is triggered by the fact that he was completely unaware that the core 2 duo was an x86_64 processor so he blindly installed the 32bit version of opensuse. He has yet never installed the x86_64 distro to even run the most basic tests. When someone posts hard figures he blindly dismisses them saying he doesn't need them. He doesn't know. He hasn't tried it. He hasn't even looked into the intel documentation on instruction clock speeds. He speaks from supposition, and a high level language programmers misunderstanding about the basic operation of compiled code. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sunday 21 January 2007 15:41, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* John Andersen [01-21-07 19:29]: [...]

...

He doesn't know. He hasn't tried it. He hasn't even looked into the intel documentation on instruction clock speeds. He speaks from supposition, and a high level language programmers misunderstanding about the basic operation of compiled code.

Ouch .......

Yes perhaps a little harsh... Oddly enough it wasn't more than an hour after I posted that than I was ping flooded. This went on for some time. I fired up ethereal to find I was being ping flooded from 64.142.14.4 and 64.142.14.6. I saved a large portion of this ethereal capture to sen to the provider (sonic.net). Then just on a lark I checked the headers of Mr Shultz's last post and the first hop was... You guested it: Received: from twain.marion28 (64-142-14-4.dsl.static.sonic.net [64.142.14.4]) (authenticated bits=0) by b.mail.sonic.net (8.13.8.Beta0-Sonic/8.13.7) with ESMTP id l0LJbAdk027981 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Sun, 21 Jan 2007 11:37:10 -0800 I can't believe the guy was so petty and foolish to flood me from his own static IP. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

On Sun, 21 Jan 2007 11:37:09 -0800, Randall R Schulz wrote:

The bottom line is that unless you have a _specific_ requirement for 64-bit operation (address space being the primary one),

Yep, like having all 4 gig of memory in my machine usable, or having full 4 gig address space for user space processes. But there is also the fact that a compiler lives an easier life in AMD64/EM64T as it has more registers available. Philipp -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Sunday 21 January 2007 14:40, Jan Engelhardt wrote:

...

2. On my main workstation, glxgears got 10,000 frames/sec with the x86_64 install, and 7,000 frames/sec with the i386 install, a noticeable difference.

I repeat it again: glxgears is *NOT* an appropriate benchmark. And I doubt 3000 frames/sec really make a difference since humans don't notice any improvement above 70 fps.

That is a specious argument Jan. Its faster in 64 bit. Period. By almost 30% What does it matter that a program has to test large numbers of events to accumulate a meaningful sample size? Are you saying that because a human could never even conceptualize adding 3.1459 to 239.732 in the time a computer could perform the operation a billion times we should just go back to the abacus? We don't need computers that are faster than us? You sit down at a computer that can muster at most 70fps running glxgears and see how happy you would be compared to using one that does 7000fps. Glxgears is as good a "quick measure" as anything else. Dismissing it because its faster than you can see is just silly. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Monday 22 January 2007 01:40, Jan Engelhardt wrote:

...

Glxgears is as good a "quick measure" as anything else.

The problem lies therein that graphics drivers may take shortcuts. Such as writing only changed frames (as in "bitmap you see onscreen") to the hw, leading to an artificially higher fps rate.

While that may be true, it would seem mostly to be germane when comparing two different graphics cards. But I don't see how it could affect the very SAME hardware running a 64bit vs a 32bit install. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Thanks for your reply To answer your question I'm upgrading my machines to 64 bit CPU's. On Sunday January 21, 2007 12:44 pm, J Sloan wrote:

Stephen P. Molnar, Ph.D. wrote:

...

Although not new to linux I am not a hardware person. I have a rather simplist (perhaps) question. The question is whether 32 bit SuSE will work on a 64 bit CPU?

I am planning on upgrading by linux machine to 64 bits and would like to use the primary master (linux installation only) on the new machine - which would make life considerably simpler for me.

32-bit suse can run on x86_64, but not ia64. It's unlikely that you have ia64 hardware, so the answer is most likely yes.

Just curious why you'd want to do that though.

Joe

-- Stephen P. Molnar, Ph.D. Life is a fuzzy set Foundation for Chemistry Stochastic and multivariant http://www.geocities.com/FoundationForChemistry -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org