Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 13:41:25 -0800 From: Joshua Uziel <uzi@suse.com> Message-ID: <20001102134125.D22367@gimp.org> Subject: Re: [suse-sparc] 64 bit kernel vs 32 bit
* David Nellans <dave@cs.colgate.edu> [001102 12:23]:
> i'm using redhat 6.2 with the stock 32 bit kernel and after all this
> discussion about 64 bit kernal, what exactly is the advantage of going
> to a 64 bit kernel if the user space is still only 32 bit?
Keep in mind that you can only use a 64-bit kernel on an Ultra, and you
can only use a 32-bit kernel on a non-Ultra (with Linux, at least). You
have no choice in the matter.
To answer your question, the userspace applications won't be able to
take advantage of things, but the kernel can play with twice the data at
a given time, and you can expand size limitations like page size, disk
block size, total RAM limit, total filesystem size limit, etc. I can't
say how much of a speedup (if any) there is due to not being able to run
a 32-bit kernel on a 64-bit machine to compare.
> does solaris even implement the whole os as 64 bit clean?
Yes... they have since Solaris 7.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.0 : Wed Jun 06 2001 - 11:08:14 PDT