Oracle Database 11g on 64 bit Linux?

[12 OCTOBER 2007 - IMPORTANT UPDATE ON AVAILABILITY OF ORACLE DATABASE 11G FOR LINUX x86_64]

When I was looking at the August announcement of Linux availability for Oracle Database 11g, I seem to have missed a little wrinkle.

Hi,
11G only appears to be available in 32 bit for Linux, is there a date by which a 64 bit version will be available?

Thanks

Pete

The reply:

No official date yet.

~ Madrid

After the types of comments that you see in these forums, I ran across this one:

My speculation has to do with timing - Open World is around the corner; and branding would require an 11g App Server to show up soon as well.

As of today, the Oracle Database download page lists Linux x86 as the only platform for Oracle Database 11g. Compare this to the available platforms for Oracle Database 10g Release 2:

Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.3) for Microsoft Windows Vista
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1.0) for Microsoft Windows
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1.0) for Microsoft Windows (x64)
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1.0) for Microsoft Windows (64-bit Itanium)
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1.0) for Linux x86
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1.0) for Linux x86-64
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1.0) for Linux Itanium
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1.0) for Linux on Power
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1.0) for AIX5L
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1.0) for HP-UX PA-RISC
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1.0) for HP-UX Itanium
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.2) for HP Tru64 UNIX
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.2) for HP OpenVMS Alpha
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.2) for OpenVMS Itanium
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.2) for Solaris Operating System (x86)
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1.0) for Solaris Operating System (x86-64)
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1.0) for Solaris Operating System (SPARC) (64-bit)
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.2) for z/Linux
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.2) for z/OS (OS/390)

And here's a post from, and for, the manly men:

When people talk about 32 versus 64 bit Oracle with Linux they are actually talking about 3 topics:

1. Running 32 bit Oracle on 32 bit Linux with native 32 bit hardware (e.g., Pentium IV (Willamette), Xeon MP (Foster MP) ).
2. Running 32 bit Oracle on 32 bit Linux with x86_64 hardware.
3. Running 64 bit Oracle on 64 bit Linux with x86_64 hardware.

The oddball combination folks don’t talk about is 32 bit Oracle running on 64 bit Linux because Oracle doesn’t support it....

The most interesting comparison would be between 1 and 2 above provided both systems have precisely the same core clock speed, L2 cache and I/O subsystem. As such, the comparison would come down to how well the 32-bit optimized code is treated by the larger cache line size. There would, of course, be other factors since there are several million more transistors in an EM64T processor than a Xeon IV and other fundamental improvements. I have wished I could make that comparison though. The workload of choice would be one that “fits” in a 32 bit environment (e.g., 1GB SGA, 1GB total PGA) and therefore doesn’t necessarily benefit from 64 bitness....

One place I always check for configuration information is Oracle’s Validated Configurations web page. This page covers Linux recipes for installation success. I just looked there to see if there was any help I could give offer that DBA and found that there are no 32 bit validated configurations!

I know there is a lot of 32 bit x86 hardware out there, but I doubt it is even possible to buy one today. Except for training or testing purposes I just can’t muster a reason to even use 32 bit Linux servers for the database tier at this point and to be honest, running a 32 bit port of Oracle on an x86_64 processor makes very little sense to me as well.

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