Linux and Opteron

[murakami]

Since there are a couple of OS/hardware afficionados here, I wanted to see what folks thought.

I'm considering buying a couple of HP DL 145. These are dual Opteron servers that have posted some impressive benchmarks (WebBench) for the price point.

1. Are there any other linux distros, other than Suse, that support Opteron explicitly?
   
   
2. Any comments on Java support on Opteron? Java SDK 1.5 is supposed to support Opteron, but that won't be released until this summer, supposedly.
   
   
3. Anyone have any experiece with linux and opteron that they would like to share, the articles I have read are not promising.
   

[bascule]

Are there any other linux distros, other than Suse, that support Opteron explicitly?

I really need to look into this as we're planning on purchasing an x86-64 HPC cluster at work (although it will probably be Nocona Xeons). Offhand I do not know. I do know, however, that FreeBSD has tier 1 (i.e. first class) support for x86-64.

Any comments on Java support on Opteron? Java SDK 1.5 is supposed to support Opteron, but that won't be released until this summer, supposedly.

While the HotSpot compiler doesn't (yet?) output x86-64 code, you should be able to build an x86-64 JRE (quite easily on FreeBSD through the ports collection) which should at least speed up the execution of the JRE itself. The JVM does an excellent job of SSE2 optimizations, so it could leverage that on the Opteron (although the Opteron's SSE2 implementation is supposedly mediocre)

Anyone have any experiece with linux and opteron that they would like to share, the articles I have read are not promising.

Same here... seems like quite a bitch for the time being to get a complete native x86-64 system going...

[murakami]

I really need to look into this as we're planning on purchasing an x86-64 HPC cluster at work (although it will probably be Nocona Xeons). Offhand I do not know. I do know, however, that FreeBSD has tier 1 (i.e. first class) support for x86-64.

Did some more research, it seems the vendors under the United Linux are supporting Opteron. Suse and Turbolinux support Opteron, but I dunno about SCO . ;)

While the HotSpot compiler doesn't (yet?) output x86-64 code, you should be able to build an x86-64 JRE (quite easily on FreeBSD through the ports collection) which should at least speed up the execution of the JRE itself. The JVM does an excellent job of SSE2 optimizations, so it could leverage that on the Opteron (although the Opteron's SSE2 implementation is supposedly mediocre)

I need the SDK, so I'm SOL until Sun's release. Another good reason to open up the process.

Same here... seems like quite a bitch for the time being to get a complete native x86-64 system going...

Yep, I'm hanging fire for a month or two but I don't want to go to win2003 yet. Bleh.