Linux and AMD MP's

[KingofFah]

The Althon MP/XP processors are said to be designed for WinXP, but how do they perform on Linux? If anyone has a dual MP setup and has run both WinXP Pro and Linux on it, then please tell me how your system performs. Naturally I would love to use any UNIX platform over WinXP. I am afraid that because the processors are designed for WinXP, that they will perform better in WinXP than they would in Linux. Thanks for any help.

 

[KingofFah]

BTW, people, please do not go crazy making this a discussion on which OS is better (I doubt many of you would actually say XP is better anyway). I know that practically all UNIX OS's easily annihilate all Windows OS's in every category except for compatibility. This post is simply to find out in what OS do the MP CPU operate better. This post is not about finding out how, overall, the OS's perform.

 

[Nothinman]

I have Linux running on a TigerMP with 2 1.2Ghz chips and it runs great. The only problem is I can't burn CDs with DMA enabled on the drive, I'm not sure if the problem is the IDE chipset, the drive or the driver but it's not a big deal for me as all my hard disks are SCSI.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Ive got an Athlon XP 1800 and it works great with OpenBSD. Not quite linux, but good enough 😉

(its on a dual Athlon board with only one processor)

 

[Quake]

This is just a marketing Scheme to sell the processor, because Athlon XP sounds good with Windows XP 😉

Don't worry, Athlon XP/MP works fine with Unix.

 

[wjsulliv]

Intel and AMD are both attempting (Or rather AMD is attempting to copy Intel) to use roughly the same set of commands at the machine/assembler levels. Thus the architecture from a software and hardware developer standpoint doesn't matter because the same commands work on both.

This is why SPARC OS, has two versions, one for each architecture that it supports (PC and SPARC). This is also part of the reason why software for MAC OS X won't necessarily run on a linux box, even though they share very similar roots the most basic coding is not compatable. Hence, why Windows doesn't run on a MAC and vice versa, without special software to convert the code over to the other OS.

However, both Windows XP and Linux are designed to run on an the same architecture (I think its x86) that is run by both AMD and Intel. Thus for the most part it shouldn't be a big deal/difference.

 

[Nothinman]

This is also part of the reason why software for MAC OS X won't necessarily run on a linux box, even though they share very similar roots the most basic coding is not compatable.

The coding is compatible, there's a C compiler for virtually every processor out there. If you're doing large amounts of coding in asm you've got more issues than portability.

Hence, why Windows doesn't run on a MAC and vice versa, without special software to convert the code over to the other OS.

NT <=4 runs on PPC boxes (along with Alpha, MIPS and x86), not necessarily the same ones OS X runs on, but that's more a driver issue than anything. Of course MS dropped support for everything bug x86 since NT 5.

However, both Windows XP and Linux are designed to run on an the same architecture (I think its x86) that is run by both AMD and Intel. Thus for the most part it shouldn't be a big deal/difference.

Linux runs on a lot more than x86. There's 18 architecture specific folders on the Linux source tree. Obviously it's hard to get your hands on a s390 or x86-64box to try it on though.