K380 running on UX11

[Tan Tian Ho]

Question

K380 can be installed with UX11.00 with both 32 bits or 64 bits installations.
What is the differenet ? and the performance ?

[V.Tamilvanan]

Hi,

Look into this below link.

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/B3782-90716/B3782-90716.html

[Julio Yamawaki]

If you update your K380 firmware, you can install HP-UX 64 bits.
Performance will be better in 64 bits only if you use a 64 bits software, like Oracle 9i.

[Michael Tully · Accepted solution]

A K380 can run either 32 or 64 and 11i as well. See the below document.

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/B3920-90091/B3920-90091.html

Chapter: Workstation/Server Specific Information

Here is a rough explantion:
"The most obvious benefit of a 64-bit architecture is the easy availability of storage area â both in registers and in main memory. Scientists, doing work that calls for precise and fast results, will benefit from the standard 64-bit integer. Current 32-bit implementations must split such integers into two separate 32-bit values in order to achieve the same accuracy, which is at the cost of performance, since each of these 32-bit operations takes the same amount of execution time as a single 64-bit operation in the new implementation. Accuracy also pertains to signal processing, telecommunications, encryption, and compressio

[Bill Hassell]

64bit addressing does only one important thing: remove memory addressing limits. A 32bit program is limited to 960 up to 1750 megs, but a 64bit program can ask for thousands of gigabytes of RAM. There is no advantage (and a slight performance penatly) in running 64bit HP-UX if you do not run 64bit programs. 64bits will not make your programs run faster. You can see better performance *if* the 64bit programs ask for lots of RAM and use it to reduce disk I/O.

[Ted Buis]

Using a 64 bit OS means that there will more pressure on RAM and possibly disk space as code is somewhat larger. Also, effective cache size is slightly less since pointers will take up more space. Normally, I would recommend more RAM and that means that swap should also grow. If you have 64-bit applications or database then, usually the positives greatly outweigh any negatives.
If you are concerned about performance, then the first step is to understand performance in your current environment. If you are I/O bound and don't do any other adjustments, a 64-bit OS likely won't solve your problems. Since the 64-bit OS can run 32-bit applications, there are few reasons to use the 32-bit OS on 64-bit hardware, if RAM and disk are not limiters.