Re: single core high performance computing/max memory?

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips Chris <me@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in part:
> I'm looking for a high performance computing environment
> for genetic analysis.  As far as I understood, as
> well Opterons as Xeons can only address 4GB of main
> memory per core. Is this right?  

No,  it is very dated.   For about 10 years, x86 CPUs have
had the capability of addressing far more than 4 GB. 64 GB
at least with PAE and 1 TB with x86_64.  The problem is most
motherboards have much smaller capabilities.

The 4 GB limit applies per _process_ on a 32-bit OS.
A good 32 bit OS can handle multiple 4 GB processes.

But for your app (presumably some sort of pattern search),
you are probably best going with x86_64 where you get 48
bit virtual addresses and ~40 bit physical as well as the
64 bit ops.  Linux is very available for x86_64, and it is
getting difficult to find any PC without x86_64 capabilities.


-- Robert