64-bit Toys for Athlon-64? 82
gbulmash asks: "I'm looking to see just how much performance I can squeeze out of a new Athlon-64 system. This isn't for benchmarking, but more like you got a new car and you're looking for a long, straight road where you can push the needles into the red before letting off the gas (and then maybe a twisty mountain road to test cornering). Can the all-knowing Slashdot readers recommend some AMD-64 enabled/optimized distros and packages that will let us new proud papas of AMD-64 systems fully open up the throttle on these bad girls and see what they're made of?"
Well, (Score:3, Informative)
http://dev.gentoo.org/~brad_mssw/amd64-tech-notes
T-Minus 10 second and counting til someone starts bashing Gentoo and recommending Debian.
Re:Well, (Score:2)
Another note: (Score:2)
Microsoft Announces Beta Version of Windows XP 64-Bit Edition For 64-Bit Extended Systems [microsoft.com]
It looks like you can download the beta if you are an MSDN member only.
-10: Flamebat && Troll (Score:2)
Seriously, why anybody even bothers to post a recommendation of something MS on
don't make everything x86-64 native (Score:1)
64bit code will be larger and gcc is currently much worse at generating code for x86-64. Only compile things that actually show a benefit from it as 64bit native if speed is what you desire.
Re:Well, (Score:2)
Re:Well, (Score:2)
Wrong. Debian is made to be a easy-to-maintain stable linux distribution. Because of being made for servers, it also uses tried and tested (read: outdated) packages optimised for the whopping 386.
Gentoo is for die-hard users who demand everything current and fully optimised for their system. Because it's their system, they can sacrifice some stability.
Sinply it's a trade-off for "stable, unoptimised, an
Re:Well, (Score:1)
T-Minus 10 second and counting til someone starts bashing Gentoo and recommending Debian.
"""
??? I'm a died-in-the-wool Debian user, and yet I've recommended Gentoo to many more people recently than I've recommended Debian.
Do you really see that much Gentoo bashing? Are you sure they're real debian users and not just MS plants? Either way, they're idiots, Gentoo's perfect for this situation.
Foot to the metal!
YAW.
How good is GCC with athlon64? (Score:2)
Anyone have any experience/knowledge?
OpenSSL (Score:2)
Re:OpenSSL (Score:1)
no don't (Score:1)
NAY! (Score:3, Interesting)
Granted, it's not gospel, but sound in theory.
Re:no don't, but hey, wait a min (Score:1)
opcodes (Score:1)
Re:opcodes (Score:1)
What tools can be used to bech Linux period? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What tools can be used to bech Linux period? (Score:1)
Try this (Score:2)
Uhhhh.....yeah (Score:1, Funny)
I'm a bit confused why you'd want to assign a string to a double in the first place, but I guess in C everything is a number at the end of the day so it's still valid.
Re:Uhhhh.....yeah (Score:1)
The double equals sign is in fact a conditional operator, and the single equals sign is in fact an assignment operator, but the != is by no means a single equals sign. It is correct as stated, read simply "not equals".
Also, he is not assigning a string. He is assigning a hex value 0xFFFFFFFF. By prepending a value with 0x you are stating that the attached sequence should be interpreted as a series of hex characters -- 0-9 and A-F. If you haven't lea
Re:Uhhhh.....yeah (Score:1)
Actually, he's not assigning anything...he's comparing the number 4294967295 to the value of i. Thing is, his code is a sort of a trick. The first time into the while loop, the test will pass (because 1 is not equal to 4294967295), the statement below it will be executed, and the program will exit (return 0). With proper brackets (because slashdot is stupid and won't let you indent), the code would look like the code below. T
Re:Uhhhh.....yeah (Score:1)
if it was a:
while(i++ != 0xFFFFFFFF)
{
return 0
}
it would run once and then exit...
but because of the semi-colon right after the comparison, nothing is executed in the loop, it just loops, then once i is sufficiently large... it will return 0... although if it was void main, the return wouldn't be needed at all...
Re:Uhhhh.....yeah (Score:1)
Re:Uhhhh.....yeah (Score:1)
Re:Uhhhh.....yeah (Score:2)
it initializes the variable, declares a while loop which only accomplishes the autoincrement, looping until it reaches the proper value. Then when finished with the while loop it exits with a return value of zero, the return statement is not part of nor
Re:Uhhhh.....yeah (Score:1)
> while(i++ != 0xFFFFFFFF)
> {
> return 0
> }
You've left out the semicolon after "return 0". Well just a minor mistake.
Re:Uhhhh.....yeah (Score:1)
Slashdot comment boxes need 2 things
1) The ability to tab
2) A compile button
Re:Uhhhh.....yeah (Score:2)
int main(int argc, char *argv)
{
double i=0;
while ( i++ != 0xFFFFFFFF);
return 0;
}
Re:Uhhhh.....yeah (Score:1)
Re:Uhhhh.....yeah (Score:2)
0 != 0xFFFFFFFF
The variable is evaluated
Also, just for the fun of it, change the declaration of i from 'double i=0' to 'int i=-1' and see what happens (at least on x86, alpha, usparc, ppc), find out why, and dont ever forget
Re:Uhhhh.....yeah (Score:2)
Then I realized I was up pretty late tonight, and went to sleep.
Re:Try this (Score:1)
So I believe the code should be:
int main(int argc, char *argv)
{
double i=0;
while ( i++ != 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF);
return 0;
}
Re:Try this (Score:2)
Note that you have to turn optimications off, or declare i as volitale or any half way decient compiler will optimise it out and turn your program into int main(int argc, char * argv) { return 0; } which is not what you want.
I would also recomend that you change that double to a long long or something (been too long since I've done 64 bit, so I don't recall the exact syntax), double is plenty of space to store [a rounded representation of] that number on most platforms such as x86, and most FPUs are g
Not much (Score:3, Informative)
actually I don't know this... does Athlon 64 have a 64 bit x 64 bit = 128 bit result operation ?
The other applications that do really well with more memory are database type operations, where you are caching 16 GB of tables in memory so you don't have to go to disk (note, yes this means you need about 20 GB of RAM on the system)
Have fun
Re:Not much (Score:2)
Re:Not much (Score:2)
What you want to look at is something well north of 100 G, oh and of that you want a 20-30 G working set... Now you are talking about something that can use 64 bits
Re:Not much (Score:2)
But I agree with you
Oh yea, and just like we saw when we went from 8 bit to 16 bit computing, and again when we went from 16 bit to 32 bit comp
Re:Not much (Score:2)
Re:Not much (Score:2)
It does (it's just like the 32-bit x86 multiply except it puts the 128-bit result into rax:rdx, instead of the 64-bit result into eax:edx). And so, yes, you can do sick fast PK crypto on it. Half the number of words => 1/4 as much work, cause lots of the underlying algorithms (like multiplication) are O(n^2), or sometimes O(n^~1.6).
dude, we're talking computers here! (Score:2)
Dude, it's late, put down the caffine and step away from the coffee pot!
An easy easy answer. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:An easy easy answer. (Score:2)
You should already have something to test it with. (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, the only thing you've proven is you can purchase something hot off the assembly line so that it can sit there and do 0 work for you. Don't you have an application or server or _something_ that you intend to use this machine for?
If not, I hope you have some kind of justification for this box for your management in their budget
Re:You should already have something to test it wi (Score:2)
Re:You should already have something to test it wi (Score:2)
Re:You should already have something to test it wi (Score:2)
Yeah, but why bother when you can get an Athlon64 board for = $100? (Unless you want, and can afford, to put 2-4 of those little beauties all together, in which case the answer is obvious).
Re:You should already have something to test it wi (Score:2)
Re:You should already have something to test it wi (Score:1)
I've got some Win 32 bit games, but the main reason for this is that I've never owned a bleeding-edge, top-of-the-line system before. Could never afford one before.
With upcoming life events, it's unlikely I'll be able to justify something this new/hot/expensive for the next 20 years. So my wife agreed not to complain if I bought a badass system as a b-day present for myself.
So, yeah, it's a bit unjustified, maybe an early "mid-life crisis" toy. But it's better than buyi
Re:Oh yeah, I forgot. (Score:2)
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/x86_64 [suse.com]
That is the correct URL
Another distro to try (Score:2)
Bikers have a word for this (Score:2)
No idea about auto drivers, but bikers have a word for this: squid. It's about as relevant as graphics card benchmarks.
See, anyone worth a salt tailors the race to their bike. I ride a touring bike. I'll race any super sport ten laps around Laguna Seca. But we start and end the race in Maryland. My father has a super-motardish bike. He'll
Crunch some numbers! (Score:1)
and if you'd like to race my code on your Athlon-64 verses everyone else's
PII/III/4s and Athlons, I can let you have the source, and maybe reserve a
chunk for you (it's not one of these flashy client-server setups). It assume
the usual GNU compiler toolchain, so any linux distro or similar would be
ideal. (Gentoo - get everything optimised for your system?)
Phil
Re:Crunch some numbers! (Score:2)
hmmm (Score:2)
SUSE for AMD64 (Score:3, Informative)
For something a little more affordable, SUSE 9.0 for AMD64 will be released tomorrow. (Along with the IA32 version I preordered)
For a no-cost alternative, you can download all 9 ISOs for the SUSE 8.2 for AMD64 beta here [suse.com].
64 bit chess (Score:1, Interesting)
Some chess engines represent the chessboard using "bitboards". A bitboard is where you use every bit in a 64-bit unsigned int to represent the state of a square on the board. To represent the whole board you use multiple bitboards... for example:
To get the location of white rooks you would and the two bitboards above together. You'd have to store black pieces, knights, bishops etc... in their own boards. You get the i
Chess? (Score:2)
$7fC0A09088848281 (I think I have that right, if you break that up into one byte per row on the chess board you can check it).
which neatly fits in one 64 bit word. It turns out that 64 bit processors are great for chess, significantly faster!
Chess on 64bit? (Score:1)
Re:Chess on 64bit? (Score:2)
Yeah... (Score:1)
Start working on porting GIMP, OpenOffice and some other apps to 64-bitness