If you want to have this newsletter mailed to you or you want to make comments/suggestions about the format/content then send an email to acedb@sanger.ac.uk.
Acedb goes live on the Opteron !
(Thanks to Duncan Napier who is the true hero of this article dgnapier@sfu.ca)
Acedb has been ported to run on machines using AMD's Opteron chip (this is the AMD 64-bit Intel compatible chip).
After lots of email exchange with Duncan Napier and some good debugging by him, it turned out that a simple one line change was all that was needed:
/* NEW ADDITION for the AMD64/Opteron */
#if defined(__x86_64__)
# define STACK_ALIGNMENT 8
#endif
This change in wh/mystdlib.h ensures that the acedb code when compiled for the opteron uses a stack word length of 8 bytes.
The main work to port acedb onto 64-bit machines was done about 10 years ago for the then DEC (subsequently COMPAQ, now HP) Alpha chip. This allowed rapid porting subsequently to SGI, HP and IBM-6000 machines.
To be able to configure acedb so easily for this new chip, which is bound to become very popular over the next 2 or 3 years, is a definite coup, proving once again the great portability of the ACEDB kernel.
Thanks Duncan !
A monthly build incorporating Duncans port to the Opteron will be available by mid August along with a number of fixes. More news next month.
You can pick up the monthly builds from: