[BioC] 64 Bit Itanium and the Affy Package

[larsenmtl at comcast.net]

Bioconductor Subscribers -
I know this has been discussed in some depth but I'm hoping someone can provide me some concrete answers.  I'm attempting to process at a minimum 200 (in a perfect world 400)  HgU133 Plus 2.0 CEL files using R and the affy package.  My Win32 server with 2 gigs of RAM, dies (no errors - it just locks up) trying to ReadAffy() as little as 38 of these.  So, we're looking at getting a 64-bit Itanium linux workstation with around 24 gigs of RAM.  Two Questions:
- with that much RAM, how many CEL files will I be able to work with?  Primarily we would employ the ReadAffy() and RMA() functions but wouldn't mind using expresso() if possible.
- are there any instructions for compiling bioconductor packages in 64 bit?  How about R?  I've read the R mailing list and R-Admin and it's seem quite doable, I'm just curious if any "how-tos" exist. 
- are there any preferred distros of linux to work with?  Right now we are looking at the 64 bit version of Red Hat Enterprise or Mandrake 10.0.
Thank you.
Mark Larsen
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