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Re: Re: Re: 64-bit pentium


   For added clarification I wanted to add to my comments.  EMT64 is 
supported for Linux only since there is no officially shipping version 
of Windows 64 available for x86 (64-bit).  We are investigating support 
for Windows 64-bit for a future version, sometime after that OS is 
officially released.

Specific details of Linux support for x86 (64-bit) processors and for 
all other hardware can be seen here:

http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/platforms.html

-Jeff

------------
Jeff Bryant
Wolfram Research, Inc.

Jeff Bryant wrote:

>    I apologize ahead for the length of this response, but there are 
> several technical details that require explanation.
> 
>    Starting with Mathematica 5.1, the EMT64 system is supported as with 
> all other x86 (64-bit) processors including the Opteron and Athlon64. 
> The EMT64 is Intel's name for their line of x86 (64-bit) processors. 
>  From Mathematica's point of view, there is no difference in these 
> processors.
> 
>    Due to all of the variants of the x86 (64-bit) processor line, it is 
> easier to encapsulate the entire processor family under one name rather 
> than listing explicitly every variant of the processor line.  For this 
> reason x86 (64-bit) was chosen since it includes all of these processors.
> 
> The current version of Mathematica is already tuned for the G5 processor 
> which means that it is capable of taking advantage of most of its 
> capabilities while still maintaining compatability with older G3 and G4 
> processors.  In fact, it runs much faster than the same version on 
> either of those chips.  The speed of the G5 has little to do with the 
> fact that it is a 64-bit chip, but do to the other architectural 
> improvements surrounding it.  For this reason, you can still get the 
> speed without requiring a 64-bit compiled version. 64-bit typically 
> gives you the ability to address more memory than a 32-bit application, 
> not speed, although some operations such as big number arithmetic can 
> see some speedups from 64-bit optimizations.  This is true for all 
> 64-bit processors in general.
> 
>   It is not possible to take advantage of any 64-bit memory addressing 
> for the G5 since the current version of Mac OS X does not support 64-bit 
> memory addressing for applications.  Apple is working on a new version 
> of the OS named Tiger that will hopefully introduce 64-bit memory 
> addressing for user applications, but with the current version of the 
> OS, there is no way to accomplish this.  Tiger OS is not yet shipping, 
> so we will have to investigate Mathematica for Tiger for a future 
> version.  No release date is available for a Tiger compatible Mathematica.
> 
>    Wolfram Research is working closely with Apple Computers to provide 
> the best possible performance for Mathematica users on Mac OS X.  We 
> currently address all the memory supported by Mac OS X version 10.3 
> (Panther), currently 4GB per process.
> 
> Specific questions about platform support can be directed to Technical 
> Support (support at wolfram.com).
> 
> ---------------
> Jeff Bryant
> Wolfram Research, Inc.
> 
> Selwyn Hollis wrote:
> 
>>On Feb 10, 2005, at 2:46 AM, Alan wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>When can we expect a version of Mathematica optimized
>>>for this?
>>>
>>>regards,
>>>alan
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Ditto for Macintosh G5. I presume we'll have to wait for Mathematica 
>>6.0?
>>
>>
>>-----
>>Selwyn Hollis
>>Applied Symbols
>>http://www.appliedsymbols.com


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