[j-nsp] 32-Bit JunOS on the 64-Bit Routing Engines

[Joel jaeggli]

On 8/25/11 17:56 , Jonas Frey (Probe Networks) wrote:
> Thats not completely accurate, for example the Intel Atom D525 does run
> 64bit code.

there are a number of atoms the support 64bit, I think that the
observation I was making was that there are atoms that don't support
PAE, by virtue of not supporting 4 or more GB of ram.

>
>> There are plenty of machines that do. virtually every intel system since
>> the pentium pro  (except the atom) has the hardware if not the bios
>> support for doing so, that's not germain to the question of whether it's
>> feasible/useful in an embedded system. In particular, in a system (like
>> for example a firewall) where kernel datastructures may represent the
>> overwhelming source of memory utilization, the  PAE performance hit may
>> trivially overwhelm the value of any memory that can otherwise be freed
>> up for userspace.
>>
>> 64bitness has been the prefered approach for intel based servers since
>> about 2003, but the embedded lifecycle runs on it's own timeline.