Re: Byte article - 64 bit Unix

Larry McVoy (lm@neteng.engr.sgi.com)
2 Nov 1996 23:36:23 GMT

The users of IRIX, an OS that fully supports 64 bit, expect that they
can have files that are >32 bits in length, have an address space that
is >32 bits in length (I frequntly do builds on systems with more main
memory than can fit in 32 bits), etc.

Linux is 64 bit in that the types are right. Linux is not 64 bit in that
the file systems don't support >32 bit offsets (something that wouldn't
be hard to fix, sounds like a version number on ext2fs).

Oh, yeah, one other thing. People have to be able to move data in and
out of memory at rates that are meaningful. SGI's XFS can move data at
.5GB/sec. There is no limit at .5GB/sec, we've just never hooked up more
disks than that. We will, I'm working on a project that will be doing
1.5GB/sec. Linux can't do that (yet). I look forward to the day when it
can.

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Larry McVoy     lm@sgi.com     http://reality.sgi.com/lm     (415) 933-1804