[daip] AIPS on the x86_64.

[Omri Schwarz]

> Omri Schwarz writes:
> 
>  > I work in Linux support for the Center For Space Research, and I have an
>  > AIPS related hardware purchase to decide on, so I thought I'd ask whether 
>  > anyone has begun running AIPS on Opteron machines and whether the AIPS
>  > code base makes enough use of 64 bit floating point operations to justify 
>  > spending the extra money for a 64 bit processor. I'd be much obliged
>  > if you had any information.
>  > 
> 
> AIPS does very little DOUBLE PRECISION computation since 32-bit floats
> are adequate for almost all scientific data.  In fact, we have had
> problems with our dynamic memory algorithm on 64-bit machines since
> some of them allocate dynamic memory at addresses requiring almost all
> of the 64 bits while placing the compiled code at addresses near 0.
> We have a solution to that problem which we will implement at some
> point soon.
> 
> I do not know what sorts of machines AIPS is run on - in fact I do not
> even know what the Italian machine was on which I debugged the dynamic
> memory problem.
> 
> Eric Greisen

Okay, thank you for the information. I will keep it in mind for 
this purchase.