Linuxolator on AMD64 Guidance

[Alexander Leidinger]

Quoting "Thomas M. Hermann" <tmh.public at gmail.com> (Tue, 20 Mar 2007 15:06:01 -0500):

> Greetings,
> 
> Is the goal of current linuxolator development to update support to
> 2.6.16 to be 64bit on amd64 or just update to 2.6.16 and run 32bit apps
> on amd64 as is done now? I've subscribed to freebsd-emulation &

The goal is to get 2.6.16 running. There's no active development for
64bit support on amd64 (at least I'm not aware of one).

> freebsd-amd64, searched through archives of said groups, looked through
> the FreeBSD developers wiki, and googled. There is only
> sys/amd64/linux32 in the cvs repository. I'm a little confused.
> 
> My interest stems from the fact that I rely on the linuxolator to run
> engineering applications which are only available on Linux. I've
> successfully run the parallel version of LS-DYNA, a FEM pre-processor
> called Hypermesh, MSC.Patran, MSC.Nastran and ANSYS. I was most amazed
> by the LS-DYNA run, both CPUs were pegged for the entire run. All of
> these applications were, obviously, the IA32 versions and performed
> beyond my expectations. But, my next computer will be 64bit and I'm
> interested in running the 64bit versions of these applications,
> primarily due to the memory requirements of the analysis.

In case you made sure 64bit versions of the software you are using does
really exist: sorry, but so far this is not possible wit FreeBSD.

> In the next 6-12 months, I'm going to be purchasing a new workstation.
> At a minimum, I will need to run ANSYS on the workstation. I have no
> interest in using Linux or Windows as my primary OS. So my options in
> order of preference are:
> 
> 1) Dual-core Opteron+FreeBSD/amd64+linuxolator/amd64+ANSYS-AMDx64
> 2) Mac Pro+VMware-Fusion+RHEL+ANSYS-AMDx64
> 3) Dual-core Opteron+FreeBSD/amd64+linuxolator/i386+ANSYS-IA32
> 
> Except that I don't know that option 1 is truly an option or will be any
> time soon. Option 3 is least preferable, but would be acceptable if
> there was the potential of moving to 64bit within the next 12-18 months.
> I went to the ANSYS website today and requested native support for
> FreeBSD and Mac, but I'm not holding my breath.

There's precedent that FreeBSD people helped companies to get a native
version up and running. Either by access to the source or just based
upon error logs or by answering questions. It sounds like this would be
interesting to one or two ports committers (e.g. maho@ maintains a lot
of scientific applications). Just in case you get someone to talk with.

> If anyone can provide any guidance, it would be greatly appreciated.

Unfortunately I can only tell you: if you need the 64bit version of the
linuxulator, you need to write it yourself (partially, I would not be
surprised if you can share a lot with the existing implementation).

Bye,
Alexander.

-- 
"`The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick 
your finger down his throat...'" 

-- The Book, on one of the Vogon's social inadequacies. 
http://www.Leidinger.net  Alexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID = B0063FE7
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