On Monday 24 September 2001 01:53 am, David A. Riggs wrote:
The SuSE updated kernel RPM's for 2.4.4 (7.1 update) located at
ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.1/kernel/2.4.4/
lists the following .rpm files:
k_deflt-2.4.4-28.i386.rpm k_i386-2.4.4-28.i386.rpm k_psmp-2.4.4-29.i386.rpm k_smp-2.4.4-27.i386.rpm
I know what k_deflt, k_i386, and k_smp are, but I can't find any mention in the README or README-kernel-announcement.txt of k_psmp. My guess is that it is a pentium optimized smp kernel and that the k_smp is only i386 optimized, but this is only a guess. Can anyone shed some light on this?
Thanks! David A. Riggs SuSE 7.1 2.4.0-64GB-SMP KDE 2.2.1 XFree86 4.1.0 Abit BP6 Dual Celeron 550Mhz
Replying to my own question for the benefit of anyone else who wondered... The k_psmp kernel is the PAE (Intel Processor Address Extension) enabled kernel. PAE is a hack to enable addressing of up to 64GB of memory. According to [1] there is a 3% - 6% performace hit just from using a kernel with it compiled in. Although RAM prices are low right now, I don't think I'll be seeing more than 4GB (non PAE limit) in my machine any time in the near future...odd that the k_psmp 2.4.0 kernel is the default for 7.1 installation. When I upgrade I'll go with the plain vanilla k_smp. [1] http://www.spack.org/index.cgi/LinuxRamLimits