The Itanic hasn't lived up to its marketing hype. The comparisons I've seen between it and a 32-bit CPU show performance differences primarily due to clock speeds. So far the only advantage of 64 bits is address space. And because they are new, itanics cost much more.
Assuming similar memory and disk sub-systems, I am considering a Quad Xeon system vs. a Dual Itanium for PostgreSQL. I believe that the PostgreSQL code is written for 32 bit and not optimized for the 64 bit Itanium cpu. That makes me think that the Xeon system would be a better choice.
So with 2 itanics you get a slight improvement. With 4 xeons you get about 1.7x improvement over your current setup.
-- jimoe at sohnen-moe dot com
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