considering i386 as a tier 1 architecture

[Paul Schenkeveld]

On Tue, Apr 02, 2013 at 10:22:20AM +0000, Ruben de Groot wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 02, 2013 at 03:10:56AM -0700, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk typed:
> > On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 2:04 AM, Dag-Erling Sm??rgrav <des at des.no> wrote:
> > 
> > > Wojciech Puchar <wojtek at wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> writes:
> > > > Lev Serebryakov <lev at FreeBSD.org> writes:
> > > > > It is not exact so. Some Atoms on some motherboards with some
> > > > > firmwares are 64-bit CPU.
> > > > don't know of any now in shops that are not
> > >
> > > http://soekris.com/products/net5501.html
> > > http://soekris.com/products/net6501.html
> > >
> > > DES
> > > --
> > > Dag-Erling Sm??rgrav - des at des.no
> > >
> > 
> > 
> > I am NOT able to understand the merit of these products with respect to
> > their features and PRICES .
> 
> They are extremely stable and robust.
> 
> > It is possible to assemble much more cheaper full featured PC like systems
> > ( DDR3 memory , 64-bit capable processors , with a disadvantage about power
> > requirements ) .
> 
> You can also get much bigger portions at MacDonald than what you get in a 
> five star restaurant.

Soekris boards are perhaps not five star boards but at least they have
four :)

Although the thread started as an april fools day prank, it's getting
serious now about the value of having i386 next to amd64.

I'm using quite a number of net4501/net4801/net5501/net6501 in many
places just because I haven't found anything that can to the same job
with the same reliability at the same low power diet for a reasonable
price.

For people on a tight budget with lower reliability expectations there
are the PC-engines Alix boards.  Except for the net6501, none of these
can run amd64.

Even though the net6501 can run amd64, I prefer running i386 on them
(and other boards where I do not need >= 4GB of RAM or the large address
space) instead of amd64 just because the system image is so much smaller,
requiring less storage on your filesystem (often a small flash device),
less time to upload changes over the Internet when doing remote upgrades
and they are more efficient with virtual memory.  Running amd64 when not
really needed is just a waste of resources.

There have been discussions in the past whether is would make sense to
run a 32-bit userland on top of a amd64 kernel sou you can have >4GB of
RAM but keep your userland relatively small.  There are only few
applications that really benefit from 64 bit address space, others could
well be 32 bit apps.

Just some random numbers to illustrate my point:

i386$ size /bin/sh /bin/ls /usr/bin/find /usr/bin/cc

   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
 111533    1048    7460  120041   1d4e9 /bin/sh
  22808     572     396   23776    5ce0 /bin/ls
  33098     760    3392   37250    9182 /usr/bin/find
 314841    9376   18204  342421   53995 /usr/bin/cc

amd64$ size /bin/sh /bin/ls /usr/bin/find /usr/bin/cc

   text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
 129371    1992   10272  141635   22943 /bin/sh
  26255    1144     536   27935    6d1f /bin/ls
  43464    1352    4680   49496    c158 /usr/bin/find
 383330   15296   58664  457290   6fa4a /usr/bin/cc

Kind regards,

Paul Schenkeveld