Re: [GTALUG] life expectancy of 32-bit x86 [was Re: Fedora Netinstall] [long]
D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: > ... > So: I don't expect that we're going to see many programs that will > stop supporting 32-bit. A greater risk is that 32-bit ports will > become less tested. That may reduce reliability. > > Some distros are surely going to drop 32-bit soon. I would imagine > that debian won't be one of them. Debian has already dropped 32-bit PowerPC as a release architecture; 64-bit is still supported. And I've heard mutterings that i386 is getting too long in the tooth and that amd64 is very much the core architecture today. We're already seeing browsers needing ginormous address space and not playing nicely on smaller computers with less than four gig in which to romp. I'm expecting that 64-bit processors are going to become increasingly less optional in the desktop and server space, and that there may be a fork at some point with the full distros focussing on 64-bit and embedded distros being the thing to use on 32-bit hardware. 64-bit ARM has been awfully slow off the mark but is likely to be a big thing once it gets properly going. The only reasonable thing I've seen actually for sale and have personally touched and run is the Solidrun Macchiatobin. Decent little board, supports a proper DIMM-load of RAM, the 10gig SFP slots are overkill for most of us but it has a normal GigE port too. I haven't tried video but I've heard reports of people having luck with a card of the appropriate PCI flavour. (Technically you can boot arm64 on some Raspberry Pis, but they don't have enough RAM to make that worth trying.) -- Anthony de Boer --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] life expectancy of 32-bit x86 [was Re: Fedora Netinstall] [long]
On Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 08:56:54PM -0500, Jamon Camisso via talk wrote: > I think you can buy Cavium ThunderX systems if you get in touch with the > distributor in Canada. We have some of their systems in the US for arm64 > build farm purposes. I think now you can, but even a year or two ago, good luck. I think the most powerful I managed to get my hands on was an 8 core 64bit A53 reference board from Freescale (NXP? Qualcomm?) but that was a pain to try to work with because the network ports were totally weird and non standard and kernel support was not integrated yet. > But yes, the long promised ARM in the datacentre thing seems to remain > just that, a promise with no major channel resellers or anyone offering > much in terms of product. > > HP tried high density ARM servers with its Moonshot blades, but it seems > like that effort died off in 2014 as soon as it started, and the whole > HP/HPE thing the next year probably didn't help. Also a box full of independant small 32 bit arm servers was not what people wanted. They wanted large single image multicore 64 bit arm servers. -- Len Sorensen --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] life expectancy of 32-bit x86 [was Re: Fedora Netinstall] [long]
On 2018-02-14 11:06 AM, Lennart Sorensen via talk wrote: > If it was actually possible to buy arm servers I think at least some > people would have (I know I would have in the past), but none of the > systems announced could actually be bought unless you were google or > facebook or something like that. I think you can buy Cavium ThunderX systems if you get in touch with the distributor in Canada. We have some of their systems in the US for arm64 build farm purposes. But yes, the long promised ARM in the datacentre thing seems to remain just that, a promise with no major channel resellers or anyone offering much in terms of product. HP tried high density ARM servers with its Moonshot blades, but it seems like that effort died off in 2014 as soon as it started, and the whole HP/HPE thing the next year probably didn't help. Cheers, Jamon --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [GTALUG] life expectancy of 32-bit x86 [was Re: Fedora Netinstall] [long]
On 2018-02-11 01:06 PM, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote: > > - irrelevant aside: many 64-bit ARM SOCs don't support more than 2G or > 3G of RAM. This seems crazy to me since the first use-case of > 64-bit is to support wider pointers. Most ARMs are just application processors. If you're building a set-top box, you don't want to pay for all of those extra address lines you'll never use. While it's not about the RAM, Chris Tyler at Seneca gives an interesting talk about how 64-bit ARM does some rather clever vectorization by working with 128-bit vectors internally. I'm guessing the demand for ARM as anything other than application processor isn't there yet. Witness AMD's Opteron A1100: production has been scaled back, possibly even stopped. In theory you can still get a $600 A1100 dev box from SoftIron, but it's not readily available. > Almost NO 32-bit x86 chips are in current production. I think that > Intel has some goofy SoCs for IoT applications that are limited to > 32-bit but they really don't matter. No, they canned that line last year. They really were not very good. Stewart --- Talk Mailing List talk@gtalug.org https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
