From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261715AbUB0OdI (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Feb 2004 09:33:08 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262880AbUB0OdI (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Feb 2004 09:33:08 -0500 Received: from kinesis.swishmail.com ([209.10.110.86]:24080 "EHLO kinesis.swishmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261715AbUB0OdE (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Feb 2004 09:33:04 -0500 Message-ID: <403F5795.6060807@techsource.com> Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 09:43:33 -0500 From: Timothy Miller MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Scott Robert Ladd CC: "Nakajima, Jun" , richard.brunner@amd.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Intel vs AMD64 References: <7F740D512C7C1046AB53446D37200173EA28A5@scsmsx402.sc.intel.com> <403E4681.20603@techsource.com> <403E4CDF.3030300@coyotegulch.com> In-Reply-To: <403E4CDF.3030300@coyotegulch.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Scott Robert Ladd wrote: > Timothy Miller wrote: > >> In other words, Intel's implementation deviates from the architecture >> as defined by AMD. So it's not 100% compatible. I just want this >> point to be clear. > > > There may exist non-instruction-set differences between the chips as > well. Opteron systems (which have per-CPU memory control) operate as > NUMA machines; will the same be true for any of Intel's ia32e chips? > Any difference which is transparent to software is irrelevant. Hardware differences which can be dealt with and hidden by the kernel are things Linux can just deal with. The only thing that really matters here is user space. People don't seem to have problems compiling kernels for specific processors, and the kernel can be designed to also do run-time detection for the generic case (i.e. boot CD's, etc.).