On Fri, Nov 29, 2002 at 10:05:22AM +0100, Bernd Sieker wrote:

> Is there better hardware support or is it a question of userland binary
> compatibility?

It's a pure userland question (the kernel is build from the sparc64 sources,
so device support is the same as for a "real" sparc64 kernel).

But it makes quite a difference:

 - gcc/sparc is a lot more mature and generates better code than the sparc64
   variant. I get something between 15% and 20% speed improvement from the
   openssl speed tests when running my U5 in 32bit instead of 64bit mode.

 - lots of third party software still needs tweaking for 64bit or 64bit-big-
   endian environments. Try building mozilla on sparc64 one day (ok, we are
   getting closer, but...)

And actually most people realy don't need the extra address space of the 64bit
kernel.

Martin