[K12OSN] 64bit computing and LTSP

[Ben Mabbott]

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Chris Thomas wrote:

| A few weeks ago I remember seeing people talk about
| K12LTSP on Operon processors running RHEL 3. I know a
| 64 bit processor doesn't help on the client side but
| how does it help on the server side? Comparing a 64bit
| processor with a Xeon or another processor, what are
| the performance gains when using the LTSP computing
| model? In short, what is the 64bit hype all about and

It's not quite what all the hype makes it out to be. A lot of people
think "64 is 32 doubled...it must be twice as fast!" Not true
unfortunately. The major difference is in the amount of memory that the
CPU can address. With a 32bit CPU, it's 4GB. With 64bit, the theoretical
max is 18 million terabytes. Quite a jump :)

Take a look at this article if you really want to get into the nitty
gritty: http://www.arstechnica.com/cpu/03q1/x86-64/x86-64-1.html

Obviously there aren't any platforms that can support anywhere near that
amount of RAM today. But on a 64bit platform you can fill all your DIMM
slots with 4GB sticks and the CPU will be able to use all of it, which
means you can have just about everything cached. Where that really makes
a difference today is in large databases, but an LTSP server can benefit
too. The ability to have just about every app on the server cached will
make things nice and speedy...until you hit the next bottleneck that is :)

If you already have a server, I wouldn't run out and replace it with a
64bit setup just yet. Most of the benefit is down the road. Anyone in
the market for a new server should probably take a long look at an
Opteron setup though.

- --
=========================================
Ben Mabbott, bmabbott at riverdale.k12.or.us
Riverdale Grade School
http://www.riverdale.k12.or.us
11733 SW Breyman Ave. Portland, OR 97219
Phone:(503)636-4511 Fax:(503)635-7534
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