On Tue, 10 Oct 2006, Ken Teh wrote:

> Questions about Core 2 Duo platforms:
>
> Are there any gotchas with SL4x and Core 2 Duo platforms?

Other than the usual issues with young platforms: no, at least for x >= 3.

We have a Dell Precision 390 with a 1.86 GHz 6300 here. Even SL307 works 
quite well on it. It's supposed to be RHEL4-certified, although I can't 
find it on bugzilla.redhat.com/hwcert. Anyway, you can order it with RHEL4 
preinstalled.

And it screams...

> Are Core 2 Duo platforms 32-bit or 64-bit?  Or, are they like the Opterons
> and can do both?  Would they be installed with the i386 or the x86_64
> kernels?

They can do both. You choose which flavour you install.

> If it is 64-bit, how does it affect other software?  I'm thinking
> specifically about ROOT, Geant4, ....

Life is still a bit easier if you install 32-bit. It's faster with
64-bit *if* your applications are built 64-bit, although the effect is 
more pronounced on AMD CPUs and also depends on the application. ROOT 
works very well, and applications built on it usually benefit 
significantly. I think the same is true for Geant4, maybe after 
removing the word "very"  from the statement.

-- 
Stephan Wiesand
   DESY - DV -
   Platanenallee 6
   15738 Zeuthen, Germany