[plug] AMD64 Debian Box3N :D

[Cameron Patrick]

Mike Holland wrote:

> Randal Adamson wrote:
> >Hi all,
> >
> >I'm pleased to have now had time to install debian-amd64 on my Athlon64
> >SanDiego Core (oo 1mb cach3N!) 
> 
> What kind of app's benefit from that kind of cache size?

Just about everything. :P  If you're dealing with large chunks of data
at a time, or bits and pieces from all over memory, more cache is a big
win.  Compiling is one that a lot of people (well, a lot of programmers
;) notice.  Just about any kind of scientific or database apps will love
big cache, too.

I have seen software which runs more than 2x faster if you run it with
multi-threading on a dual-core AMD64, because both threads are operating
on the same data set and fetching data from the other core's cache is
faster than fetching it from main memory.

The 2MB cache, AMD64 Pentium IVs (the ones with 6xx model numbers) are
rather nice too, if you can get over the insane heat output.  For the
stuff that I've tested (albeit not very thoroughly), running them in
64-bit mode results in quite a speed improvement, and hyperthreading
also has (slight) benefits too.

> My most cpu-loading task is video encoding, and increased cache over
> 128MB (sempr0n) makes no difference at all.

My understanding is that video and audio encoding tends to do a lot of
computations over a small about of data (a few kb, maybe) at a time -
but I could be wrong about this.

> why the chroot? 32-bit apps work fine in 64-bit Ubuntu, including OO-2, 
> so long as you have the 32-bit versions of the libraries. No chroot.
>  Perhaps Ubuntu is making 'debian' a little too easy? :-)

Debian also includes 32-bit libraries (although not OO.o :() , but that
doesn't help if you want to install something more complex than a single
binary, where the convenience of a package system is nice.  I have a
32-bit Debian chroot on my Ubuntu AMD64 system at home, to run all thoes
apps that Just Don't Work on Ubuntu, or which run better in i386 mode.

Cameron.