Builder.com: Oracle Linux vs. Oracle Windows: A Benchmark War

“Intel-based servers are now moving out of the realm of personal
computing and are morphing into industrial-strength servers. The
low cost of Intel-based servers is taking the IT industry by storm.
With costs as little as one-tenth of proprietary UNIX such as AIX,
HP-UX, and Solaris, companies are saving millions of dollars by
migrating to Intel platforms.

“The only shortcoming of Intel-based servers is their 32-bit
architecture. For Oracle, the 32-bit architecture means that very
large memory regions (e.g., the Oracle System Global Area) cannot
grow beyond four gigabytes—a size far smaller than their
64-bit cousins, where Oracle RAM regions commonly exceed 20
gigabytes.

“However, this 32-bit limitation is about to change. The
impending availability of Intel 64-bit architecture has caused
widespread excitement, and Intel-based servers will soon be able to
compete with giant proprietary UNIX servers. IBM has already
announced it is abandoning its proprietary AIX UNIX dialect in
favor of Linux. While Oracle is quite vocal that Oracle is faster
than SQL Server on Intel and has announced a record-breaking
benchmark test with the Itanium processors, the company is also
very careful not to compare operating system environments…”

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