Re: Xen News

[Greg Troxel <gdt%ir.bbn.com@localhost>]

Sarton O'Brien <bsd-xen%roguewrt.org@localhost> writes:

> On Sat, 10 May 2008 12:29:27 am Christoph Egger wrote:
>> 
>> XenSource removed the support for powerpc and support for 32bit non-PAE.
>> 
>> Xen 3.3 will come without powerpc support and
>> x86 32bit hypervisor with PAE only.
>
> Gee, that's a shame.
>
> I was contemplating switching to amd64 as I have an intel em64t system
> and it would save me having to generate non-PAE guests, which can be
> IMO a PITA.

My understanding is that with amd64 dom0, one can run as domU either
amd64 or i386PAE, but not i386(non-PAE).  NetBSD does not, AFAIK,
support i386PAE dom0.  So I interpret the above as saying that Xen 3.3
on i386 is PAE only, so until NetBSD does i386PAE dom0, you can't run
NetBSD as dom0.

> This is a dell poweredge sc440 (and multiple variants), has anyone
> played much with amd64 on an em64t system? I can't imagine there'd be
> much of a performance benefit but if it's largely a success in general
> I'll give it a go.

My impression is that the real benefit is in handling more memory.