On Wed, Sep 3, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Louis Hoefler <louis at atelier-michaeldirk.de
> wrote:
> Great, thanks. Would be cool if this information is easy aviable for
> everyone.
>
>
I think this is part of Sun's culture. People used to Solaris have been
used to have 64-bit capability since around 1996.
Sun has basically forgotten about the 32-to-64 bit struggle already, though
now with the sudden influx of such a wide variety of platforms (read cheap
x86 motherboards and CPUs) Sun is discovering a few small issues. But the
point I want to make is that Sun is assuming 64-bit, while still providing
32-bit compatibility for those that needs it.
Let me propose an analogy: You don't include a message in the bottom of each
of your emails reminding your readers that you are human - you assume they
will know it, because it is what you are used to.
For those who do not know: 64-bit Solaris runs both 32-bit and 64-bit
applications without any special tricks required. In fact, most of the
commonly used commands are the 32-bit versions!
$ which ls
/usr/bin/ls
$ file /usr/bin/ls
/usr/bin/ls: ELF 32-bit LSB executable 80386 Version 1 [FPU], dynamically
linked, not stripped, no debugging information available
$ file /usr/bin/amd64/ls
/usr/bin/amd64/ls: ELF 64-bit LSB executable AMD64 Version 1 [SSE2 SSE
FXSR CMOV FPU], dynamically linked, not stripped, no debugging information
available
$
$ cd /usr/bin
$ file * |grep -c 32-bit
1168
$ file * |grep -c 64-bit
0
Truth is few people even have the 64-bit binaries in their PATH setting.
Why?
64-bit only matters if you need to
a) Do a lot of 64-bit math, and/or
b) Address more than 4 GB ram
If you don't answer yes to either of those then the smaller overhead of
running the 32-bit binary is the sensible way to go.
Proof:
$ for X in a b c d e f g h i j k l; do timex /usr/bin/ls > /dev/null;done
2>/tmp/results1
$ for X in a b c d e f g h i j k l; do timex /usr/bin/amd64/ls >
/dev/null;done 2>/tmp/results2
$
$ </tmp/results1 awk '/real/ {T+=$2} END {print T}'
0.24
$ </tmp/results2 awk '/real/ {T+=$2} END {print T}'
0.49
The 64-bit version takes twice as long!
Regardless your point is true: Sun needs to learn to capitalize on its
strengths.
_J
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