How to Determine If a System Can Run the 64–bit Solaris Operating Environment

Currently, the only platform capable of supporting the 64–bit Solaris operating environment is an UltraSPARC system. To verify if a system is an UltraSPARC system, use the following command:

$ uname -m
sun4u

If the output of the uname -m command is sun4u, then the machine is an UltraSPARC system.

If you are running the Solaris 9 release, you can verify that the machine is an UltraSPARC system by using the psrinfo command:

# psrinfo -v 		
Status of processor 0 as of: 05/30/01 13:48:46
  Processor has been on-line since 05/18/01 10:02:40.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 333 MHz,
        and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.

If the processor type is sparcv9, the platform is capable of running the 64-bit Solaris operating environment. This test does not work on previous versions of the psrinfo command, where all platforms report the less precise sparc as the processor type.