SuSE has become the first Linux distributor to make its flavour of the operating system run on AMD's Opteron 64-bit processor.
Enterprise Server 8 for AMD64 is shipping now, and the company claims that rival versions of Linux will not run on Opteron until the third quarter of this year.

The new AMD processor has generated interest partly because of the disappointing performance of Intel's Itanium 64-bit chip, which actually runs 32-bit applications more slowly than on its own Xeon 32-bit processor.

Byroff claimed that tests showed a performance improvement of about 150 per cent against other 32- and 64-bit environments, including Itanium 64-bit.

Performance is enhanced by an optimised 2.4.19 kernel, including Numa clustering technology which scales to 64 processors and 512GB of main memory.

and also...

QUOTE (The Register)

64bit Solaris for Opteron coming, McNealy tells Reg By Ashlee Vance in San Francisco Sun Microsystems is attacking the low end x86-based server market with force, as it has announcements around both AMD's Opteron processor and Intel's Xeon processor on the way, executives said today. Scott McNealy, Sun's Chief Executive Officer, Chairman and President, said in an interview that the company has already started work on a 64bit version of Solaris for AMD's Operton chip. This move shows far more support for AMD's new chip than Sun first indicated with an announcement this week for only a 32bit version of OS on Opteron.

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