10-14-2008
What Are the Differences Between Itanium and x86_64 CPUs?
This is definitely a "stupid" question, but I can't think of anywhere else to ask it, so here goes. My knowledge of CPU history on big iron machines starts with the last DEC Alphas, a short stint with Sun servers, PA-RISC and Itanium, Intel 486s on the desktop before that, and Motorola 68000 CPUs on the desktop before that. This reflect my move from "toy" Atari ST, Macs and Amigas, to Windows 3.1 and then Linux at home and finally exposure to OpenVMS, Solaris and HP-UX at work.
Having been able to work with larger systems that get moderate to heavy use, I am now wondering whether or not it would be prudent to migrate some of our Oracle servers away from HP-UX on Itanium to some form of Linux on x86_64. My manager and our vendor both claim that Linux on x86_64 would never be able to handle the load, but I'm also aware that they don't really know much about that world to begin with. Admittedly, our current Oracle server on Itanium (a four year old system now) recently had some trouble keeping up with requests from the application server. Some of that was due to some default kernel parameters that were not changed. However, I've been really wondering now, whether or not the costs of keeping Oracle on HP-UX are warranted.
I understand their perspective that we're a big HP shop and have a relationship with support people and the like that would take years to build with anyone else if ever. But I think their fears might be unwarranted in that we might have a few more people on staff here who would be able to help with the upkeep of Linux boxes instead of HP-UX. But that is another matter... My core question is: Can an x86_64 box running something like RedHat Enterprise Linux with Oracle perform just as well as an Itanium running HP-UX with Oracle or is there some really gigantic difference? Right now we're looking at spending nearly $50,000 on a new server for Oracle, and I think with about $15,000 we could have a well equipped HP Xeon box with multiple cores and CPUs and just as much RAM. Am I all wet? Ignorant of some important issues (I admit my knowledge is lacking)?
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CHCPU(8) System Administration CHCPU(8)
NAME
chcpu - configure CPUs
SYNOPSIS
chcpu -c|-d|-e|-g cpu-list
chcpu -p mode
chcpu -r|-h|-V
DESCRIPTION
chcpu can modify the state of CPUs. It can enable or disable CPUs, scan for new CPUs, change the CPU dispatching mode of the underlying
hypervisor, and request CPUs from the hypervisor (configure) or return CPUs to the hypervisor (deconfigure).
Some options have a cpu-list argument. Use this argument to specify a comma-separated list of CPUs. The list can contain individual CPU
addresses or ranges of addresses. For example, 0,5,7,9-11 makes the command applicable to the CPUs with the addresses 0, 5, 7, 9, 10, and
11.
OPTIONS
-c, --configure cpu-list
Configure the specified CPUs. Configuring a CPU means that the hypervisor takes a CPU from the CPU pool and assigns it to the vir-
tual hardware on which your kernel runs.
-d, --disable cpu-list
Disable the specified CPUs. Disabling a CPU means that the kernel sets it offline.
-e, --enable cpu-list
Enable the specified CPUs. Enabling a CPU means that the kernel sets it online. A CPU must be configured, see -c, before it can be
enabled.
-g, --deconfigure cpu-list
Deconfigure the specified CPUs. Deconfiguring a CPU means that the hypervisor removes the CPU from the virtual hardware on which
the Linux instance runs and returns it to the CPU pool. A CPU must be offline, see -d, before it can be deconfigured.
-p, --dispatch mode
Set the CPU dispatching mode (polarization). This option has an effect only if your hardware architecture and hypervisor support
CPU polarization. Available modes are:
horizontal The workload is spread across all available CPUs.
vertical The workload is concentrated on few CPUs.
-r, --rescan
Trigger a rescan of CPUs. After a rescan, the Linux kernel recognizes the new CPUs. Use this option on systems that do not auto-
matically detect newly attached CPUs.
-V, --version
Display version information and exit.
-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
RETURN CODES
chcpu has the following return codes:
0 success
1 failure
64 partial success
AUTHOR
Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright IBM Corp. 2011
SEE ALSO
lscpu(1)
AVAILABILITY
The chcpu command is part of the util-linux package and is available from Linux Kernel Archive <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils
/util-linux/>.
util-linux July 2014 CHCPU(8)