Migrating i386 to amd64

Michael Reifenberger mike at Reifenberger.com
Sat Jan 1 01:32:22 PST 2005


On Fri, 31 Dec 2004, David O'Brien wrote:
...
>> BTW: Do I have any benefit of using this hardware (2GB RAM) with amd64
>> in favour of i386 (besides a bigger virtual address space)?
>
> Yes.  A 64-bit kernel is often more efficient because so many of the
> kernel data structures these days are 64-bit counters, etc..  Also the
> AMD64 ABI has 8 more general purpose registers, which gives the compiler
> a lot more to work with in optimizing and allows parameters to be passed
> thru registers vs. the slower memory stack.  I also would not dismiss the
> benefits of the larger virtual address space.  There are applications
> where the kernel really benefits from not being constrained to its
> limited amount of VA in 32-bit mode.
>

That sounds reasonable. Thanks!

Bye/2
---
Michael Reifenberger, Business Development Manager SAP-Basis, Plaut Consulting
Comp: Michael.Reifenberger at plaut.de | Priv: Michael at Reifenberger.com
       http://www.plaut.de           |       http://www.Reifenberger.com



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