[Subject Prev][Subject Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Subject Index][Thread Index]

Re: Re: [LIH] Intel 64 bit architechture



On Thu, Dec 21, 2000 at 01:37:50PM +0530, Biju Chacko wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> You have definitely chosen the right place to ask this question. Linux was 
> ported to the IA64 quite a while back. One of the members of the team at 
> Intel that did the job is also one of the founders of Linux India -- Arun 
> Sharma. 

Thanks for the plug Biju :) I haven't used an IA-64 box in more than a year,
but I generally keep track of what's going on there.

As far as Linux being useful on IA-64 is concerned, all the keys are with
the compiler authors. IA-64 is one of those beasts where you can hand
tune assembly code and get 10x performance (in the best case that is).

But I doubt if gcc is up to the task. A year ago, it was generating 
correct, but suboptimal code. The machine independent optimizations
worked great, but the machine dependent types, especially, the ones
that take advantage of speculation and predication (read IA-64 intros
on developer.intel.com) were simply not there.

Performance problems due to a crappy scheduler ? Your problems are 
probably more mundane :) True, Linux scheduler sucks, but it won't
affect your fortran program.

BTW, Did you see that zdnet already proclaimed the "rise of BSD" to be one
of the significant technical events of 2000 ? :)

	-Arun