Mandrake To Support AMD's Hammer

ruiner writes "Mandrake has announced their intention to support AMD's Hammer with a 64 bit version optimized for the new CPU. Redhat is also rumored to be following Suse's lead. 'This new generation of AMD Athlon and AMD Opteron processors is extremely exciting. A version of Mandrake Linux dedicated to these powerful 64-bit processors can certainly accelerate MandrakeSoft's growing adoption in the Linux corporate market' said Jacques Le Marois, CEO of MandrakeSoft."

Suse?

[Spyky]

For those who don't know, because its very unclear from the article, Suse was the first (or at least before Mandrake) linux distro to announce Hammer support.

Check it out here [www.suse.de]

-Spyky

Worth noting

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD already announced report for x86-64 architecture a long time ago.

Re:OT: Mandrake Forum the last avenue?

[justsomebody]

"June 27th, 2002 - MandrakeSoft cooperates with AMD to support x86-64 architecture - Mandrake Linux 9.x for the upcoming 64-bit AMD Athlon and AMD Opteron processors is expected to be commercially available by the beginning of 2003."

This news are published on the main www.mandrake.com page????? You don't even have to log into channels. Also there was a rumor long time ago. But news are officialy published after signing cooperation. News != Rumors.

I hope your reasons to switch to Debian were better than this bashing.
I don't really use MDK, except on my notebook.

MandrakeSoft cooperates with AMD to support x86-64

[Anonymous Coward]

To provide customers with a powerful, scalable 64-bit Linux distribution with native 32-bit compatibility-

Atadena, Paris - June 27, 2002, MandrakeSoft today announced they are cooperating with AMD to port Mandrake Linux to the forthcoming eighth-generation AMD AthlonTM and AMD OpteronTM processor-based platforms.

Delivering on its commitment to innovative development in the Linux arena, the MandrakeSoft research and development team has begun work on adapting the Mandrake Linux operating system to run optimally on the upcoming AMD processors.

AMD is collaborating with MandrakeSoft to ensure rapid porting and commercial availability of Mandrake Linux for 64-bit AMD Athlon and AMD Opteron processors. AMD Athlon and AMD Opteron processors, based on x86-64 technology, have been designed to support large, intensive workloads providing high-performance solutions for desktops, workstations and servers. The new processors can benefit customers by providing 64-bit application support, while also offering optimized, native support for 32-bit Linux applications to provide a smooth transition from a 32-bit to a 64-bit environment.

"This new generation of AMD Athlon and AMD Opteron processors is extremely exciting. A version of Mandrake Linux dedicated to these powerful 64-bit processors can certainly accelerate MandrakeSoft's growing adoption in the Linux corporate market" said Jacques Le Marois, CEO of MandrakeSoft.

"The 64-bit version of Mandrake Linux optimized for the upcoming eighth-generation AMD Athlon and AMD Opteron processors can provide enterprise customers with a powerful, reliable and easy to install and use Linux distribution", said Robert Stead, Director of European Marketing, AMD.

Mandrake Linux 9.x for the upcoming 64-bit AMD Athlon and AMD Opteron processors is expected to be commercially available by the beginning of 2003.

About Mandrake Linux

Mandrake Linux is a powerful operating system that is available for the Intel Pentium®, AMD Athlon®, and PowerPC® processors. Mandrake Linux includes many graphical administration assistants & wizards that make it intuitive and fun to use while providing all the power and robustness of other Linux systems. Hundreds of included applications make it an ideal solution for both enterprises and individual users. Mandrake Linux is seen as the most feature-rich, multi-purpose Linux operating system ever made available.

About MandrakeSoft

MandrakeSoft provides a trusted interface between users of information technology and open source developers. The company offers its enterprise, government and educational customers a set of GNU Linux and Open-Source software and related services, and user-friendly and highly competitive information technologies. In addition, MandrakeSoft offers technologists committed to open software and courseware a trusted channel to offer their services.

The company has technologists in over 20 countries, and is traded on Paris Euronext Marche Libre (Euroclear code: 4477.PA; Reuters code: MAKE.PA) and the US OTC market (stock symbol MDKFF). "Born on the Internet'' in late 1998, MandrakeSoft has established headquarters in the U.S.A., Montreal, England and France. Please visit the Web site, http://www.mandrakesoft.com for more information.

About the AMD OpteronTM Processor

The AMD Opteron processor is based on AMD's eighth-generation processor core which is planned to mark the introduction of the industry's first x86-64 technology. This technology is planned to preserve companies' investments in 32-bit applications while allowing a seamless transition to 64-bit computing as those companies require.

The AMD Opteron processor is designed to deliver high-performance server and workstation solutions for today's most demanding enterprise applications. The processor is designed to be scalable, reliable and compatible, which can result in lower total cost of ownership. Key AMD Opteron processor innovations include an integrated memory controller, which reduces memory bottlenecks, and HyperTransport(TM) technology, which increases overall performance by removing or reducing I/O bottlenecks, increasing bandwidth and reducing latency.

About AMD

AMD is a global supplier of integrated circuits for the personal and networked computer and communications markets with manufacturing facilities in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Asia. AMD, a Fortune 500 and Standard & Poor's 500 company, produces microprocessors, Flash memory devices, and support circuitry for communications and networking applications. Founded in 1969 and based in Sunnyvale, California, AMD had revenues of $3.9 billion in 2001. (NYSE: AMD - News).

NOTE: Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, AMD Athlon, AMD Opteron, and combinations thereof, and AMD-8151 are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. HyperTransport is a trademark of the HyperTransport Technology Consortium. Mandrake and Mandrake Linux are trademarks of MandrakeSoft. All other trademarks and copyrights are owned by their respective companies.

Re:why is this such a big deal?

[guacamole]

They haven't done anything to improve that OS in over a decade.

You are truly an idiot if you think so. As for Linux, no matter how much it has improved, it still has a long way to go to match Solaris what solaris has had for years. now.

MTRR

[Paul Jakma]

MTRR == Memory Type Range Register

Used to set different policy (uncacheable, write-back, write-combing) to address ranges. Eg, for address ranges that correspond to PCI addresses (ie memory mapped IO addresses), by setting these ranges to write-combining the CPU will try to gather writes up into big writes to make most efficient use of IO bus bandwidth. (ie get higher MB/s out of your AGP or PCI - important for graphics).

see linux/Documentation/mtrr.txt and /proc/mtrr.

Re:MandrakeSoft cooperates with AMD to support x86

[Paul Jakma]

AMD Hammer/Opteron is completely IA32 (ie normal 32bit x86) compatible - all IA32 OSes boot on it, it has a standard IA32 BIOS, applications will run fine on it. If you run a x86-64 OS, then you will be able to run both 32bit and 64bit x86-64 software (side by side).

Ie x86-64 is:

- IA32 (8086 mode et al too - i /guess/)
- standard IA32 BIOS
- additional x86-64 mode

Apparently 32-bit Linux and Windows booted almost first time on early silicon, and they've had absolutely no 32bit compatibility problems - it all works. then it took just a week for AMD to get linux to boot into x86-64 mode (iirc from the talk linked below).

IA64 / Itanium on the other hand is a completely new architecture:

- completely different instruction set
- completely different ABI
- new weird "look it does everything" BIOS (EFI)
- IA32 is /emulated/ in silicon and hence slow

There's a good talk by an AMD engineer on the AMD Hammer arch. given at the recent kernel summit at:

http://ksmp3rep.sf.net/KSMP3s/amd64.mp3 [sf.net]

found amongst other kernel summit talks at:

http://linuxkernel.foundries.sourceforge.net/artic le.pl?sid=02/06/26/0116225 [sourceforge.net]

Take a look at gentoo for your 486

[Billly Gates]

Try Gentoo. Whats great about this distro is that you can recompile the whole sytem with "emerge world". That also includes all the apps and not just the kernel. I have never used it( yet) but later next month I will have broadband so I can try it out. It uses something called portage which a mix between debian apt-get and FreeBSD's ports, where you can have automatic dependency downloads or you can download the newest libs and recompile not only the kernel but the whole system with the new libs! Great for experimenting with gcc 3.1. Whats ideal about this is that you can recompile the whole system for your 486. Go here for info. Just add the settings to CHOST in /etc/make.conf to "platform=i486" and go to the CFLAGS section in the same file and add the following "o3" to make sure its optimized. After this type "emerge world" and reboot and thats it. Your whole system including all your apps will be 486 optimized. The 2 catches with gentoo is that its not a newbie distro. Make sure you fully read all of the documentation and print it all out before you even start the install. Second it will be painfully slow on your 486 to do a "emerge world". You need at least 64 megs of ram or a big ass swap space to do the install. Expect a literal all nighter for this. If your box is at work do it in the evening and pray it will be done by morning. The pro's are you only have to do the "emerge world" once. The second thing is that it will be fully optimized for your 486 and you will learn a hell of alot of info about unix and linux in general. The third is you will not have the 20 are so bloated daemons installed by defualt like mandrake and redhat. It will be slim which is important on your old computer. I have heard that this makes gentoo faster then any other distro. Even on modern athlon systems. Since Gentoo in my opinion has the best documentation so this shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Mandrake #1 Linux distribution server

[Anonymous Coward]

Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer = Mandrakesoft

http://www.netcraft.com/Survey/Reports/0205/

- Apache is not linux distribution only
- Microsoft-IIS the name say it all ;-)
- Zeus is not a distribution
- Netscape-Enterprise is not a distribution
- unknown your guess is as good as mine
- Rapidsite is unix
- Webstar Built for Mac OS X and not a distribution
- thttpd ACME-brand Unix software
- Tigershark custom Unix Web server not a linux distribution
- ConcentricHost-Ashurbanipal I dont get info on this but I dont think its a distribution ...