Superscript
"Thirty-two bits equates to 232 memory addresses"
Erm, I think you missed formatting the 32 as superscript, or missed out the ^ symbol :-) Otherwise 232 memory addresses seems quite low!
The 64-bit question
There's no question: 64-bit computing is here to stay - and it seems set to be the future of computing. But is it an essential element of your next desktop refresh cycle? Chances are it will be. The struggle to reach a stable 32-bit platform may have escaped you but it took many years before we were finally rid of slow 16- …
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 13:30 GMT Barry Tabrah
And about time too
We've had 64-bit processors in the home for the best part of a decade. The only thing holding us back was the prevalence of systems being shipped with 32-bit Windows. If we'd had the 64-bit push with Windows Vista then we'd all be happily chugging along in 64-bit already. After all, it's not like driver support was great to begin with on Vista.
Thank goodness most modern systems are shipping with 64-bit Windows 7.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 23:18 GMT Michael C
well, maybe
If they're like most of the Dell and Lenovo systems floating around here, they might have 64 bit CPUs, but they cap out at 4GB RAM. If you;re not using over 4GB, there's very little point to a 64bit OS. (in some computationally impressive tasks, it can make a difference, even with limited RAM, but i can probably count the scenarios for such being done on a laptop on one hand).
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 14:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
You should have read more on this topic before posting
This limitation is specific to Intel & compatible 32 bit architectures irrespective of the OS. Compared to Windows, Linux is treating the matter somewhat differently but it definitely has the same limitation of 4GB memory space per process. If Mac runs on 32 bit Intel then it must be subjected to the same treatment.
I know this very well because I tried hard to explain to some thick upper management dude why this 4GB limit exists even his server told him it has 16GB of RAM installed.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 15:39 GMT Test Man
Interesting
Your comment reminded me of an article that Mark Russinovich wrote. Basically 32-bit Windows isn't actually physically limited to 4GB of RAM and can overcome it with PAE too (and originally XP would allow this). The reason why there's a limit now (Microsoft removed PAE support and won't use it in Vista or 7) is because the majority of drivers weren't written to cope with a more-than-4GB-addressable-memory that PAE allowed, leading to unacceptable crashes. Therefore, they simply erred on the side of caution and (for consumer versions of 32-bit Windows at least) they limited it to less than 4GB.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2008/07/21/3092070.aspx
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 23:18 GMT Michael C
PAE is no tthe same
It still keeps a single app/process limited to 4GB, and the OS limited inside 3GB. For a server, heavy app like Photoshop, video editing, etc, it's no good. For a home user who simply keeps a ton of crap open, but little of which uses 2GB or more each, it's passable. PAE was designed for workstation folk to be able to handle multitasking while still waiting for the hardware to become 64bit, and it got used in things like small office servers that ran lots of tasks on a single box, but it;s no substitute for native 64bit support, and it is a resource drain (small, but notable) as well.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 15:29 GMT sgtrock
Ummm, no.
Actually, you should have read a bit more. 64 bit capable hardware has been the _default_, not the exception, for _at_least_ 4 years for Intel and AMD based platforms. I've been running an amd64 version of Ubuntu since 7.04, and I was a little late to the party. 64 bit drivers for Linux have been trivially easy to find. Even most of the applications simply required a recompile with the 64 bit option turned on. The only real hangup was Adobe. Flash took forever to perform correctly in a 64 bit version of Firefox.
BTW, the fact that Win7 has an artificial cap at 192 GB? FAIL. You'd think that after Dos, Win95, and WinXP they would have finally learned not to do that. (Or have they been doing intentionally all along to help force us to upgrade? Inquiring minds want to know! ;-) )
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 16:03 GMT Richard Gadsden 1
I think you should have read more...
With PAE, a 32-bit operating system can access up to 64GB RAM.
Normal 32-bit processes can only access a 4GB address space, but each process can have it's own 4GB on a PAE computer (this is the same as with a 64-bit computer - Windows x64 gives each process it's own 4GB 32-bit VM) so if you multi-task enough, you can make use of >4GB RAM.
However, a process can use AWE in Windows to access the memory beyond the 4GB limit, as long as it's prepared to do its own memory management.
Linux and Mac OS X enable PAE on just about all computers; Windows only does if you are running Enterprise Edition Server or Datacenter Edition Server - neither Windows Client, nor Windows Standard Edition Server will support PAE beyond the 4GB limit.
Microsoft say that (a) this was a licensing requirement and (b) they found quite a few drivers that blue-screened Windows if there was more than 4GB addressable.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 13:33 GMT Chris Miller
My 2p
My main system is Win7 dual boot between 32- and 64-bit. I find I spend 99% of my time in 32-bit mode. This is because:
* some older peripherals don't have 64-bit drivers
* I've never seen memory utilisation above 60% on a 3GB system
I suppose if multi-GB files are a requirement for you - but I refuse to believe an XL file can get that big, and RAW image files are a few 10s of MB. Video editing, maybe?
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 14:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
Personally,
I frequently get close to my physical memory limit, and I have 8GB. A quick glance at my task manager now tells me I'm using 4.68GB, and I'm not doing anything unusual. But then I suppose not everyone needs to run multiple copies of gearbox modelling software on a day-to-day basis...
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 15:39 GMT Annihilator
Windows ain't that daft
As difficult as it is to believe, Windows is quite intelligent when it comes to memory utilisation. It will normally aim to keep as much as it needs (or thinks it needs, or will need in the future) in the highest level of cache possible. This includes processor registers, L2 cache where available, RAM and finally the HD swap file. It'll use as much as it can, though will always leave a gap if it can for the "ooh I didn't think of that" moments.
It's not about memory utilisation, but the responsiveness of your machine, regardless of whether you're editing video or working on a 100K Excel document. The less RAM you have, the less carefree Windows can be in keeping page files off the HD.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 23:20 GMT Michael C
Video
With the prevalence of 720p and higher camcorders, the need for more than 3GB of RAM for a single app is upon us. Even photo-shop can peg a 32bit system pretty easy. I have scans that are over 1GB, I;ve seen a 2GB PDF for crying outnloud... PST files can easily climb above 4GB.
Memory utilization is misleading, as it does not take into account system processes to guarantee free memory. Give a 2Gb system that was 30% free ream another 2GB of RAM and it usually still will have 30% free, having used the other 2GB it had. Win7 especially will attempt to use all you can throw at it, and the performance improvement is notable from 2-4GB, and even to 6 on most systems (especially is slower HDDs are in use). going past 8GB has little impact, but going past 4Gb does.
Also, under win 7, ANYTHING compatible with any Win7 version has to be certified for ALL of them, 32 and 64bit, so the only 32bit only drivers you shoudl be finding are legacy systems. (and SOME of them still work, typically any that were at least Vista compatible).
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 13:51 GMT Chris Harries
PAE
Other then a few old HP printers which where fixed by using a driver for a different printer and an old web cam which, to be fair, can be replaced at the price of things these days, I have no problems with full 64bit OS and drivers. Many many apps are still in 32bit, but those that are it usually doesn't matter (photoshop etc are 64bit now). So things have improved a lot in the last 2 years I'd say from my experiance.
Correct me if I'm, wrong, but the 4GB limit only exists if your not running PAE which many OS's have had for a while. You can only go up to 4GB in windows desktop OS's but Windows server has had it for a while. Linux has it in the desktop though, obviouslly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension#Microsoft_Windows
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 14:04 GMT LesC
64 Bit *hit
Recently added a default 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate preinstalled on a Dell Vostro laptop to a bog standard W2003 domain running a Sharp PCL b/w & Oki colour laser P/S printer with a 32-bit well known proprietry dental software suite.
Result:
No 64 bit drivers for the printers. Not good and wasn't going through the hastle of installing unsigned 32 bit, went for generic PCL/ PS instead.
<THEN>
The Imagelevel imaging software bombed out at install & the well known dental software wouldn't work -it ran out of 32 bit handles, whatever they are - during the install, kicking me out in the process.
AAAARGH! Call to the helpdesk - no 64 bit s/w available from wellknowndentalsoft & co.
Had to rebuild using W7 Enterprise 32-bit from Technet then getting a licence from M$, all works.
Les
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Wednesday 16th March 2011 10:07 GMT sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
64 bits...
While 64 bit AMD64 (or whatever intel calls it, remember AMD did it first) is faster than IA32 code (mainly because compilers get to use the larger visible register file that AMD64 specifies) this is not always true on other architectures.
On the PPC for example, for a number of reasons, code that can be restricted and compiled to 32 bits can be actually faster than 64 bit code. But in my experience this difference is often not as drastic as the difference between AMD64 code and IA32 code. In the case of x86, compilers just really seem to love the extra registers, and this sort of more than offsets the slightly increased overhead of the slightly larger code and data.
Why you are not seeing much difference doowles might be the result of i/o bottleneck ie hard disk/network and/or also possibly swap. Just a guess, for this is by far the biggest bottleneck I feel I have in my day to day use. That is unfortunately a problem that going to 64 bits will not solve, if at all, may exacerbate due to slightly larger data/executables.
I personally have grown to love SSD's - they help somewhat. But my god, are they costly....
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Wednesday 16th March 2011 10:04 GMT sT0rNG b4R3 duRiD
64 bit OS X? Wait a minute...
In 10,6, you are given the choice of 2 kernels...
Well, you may not have known you had the option, for leopard will default to a 32 bit one for general use, and a 64 bit one for the more bleeding edge which you had to deliberately choose to boot. I believe that the first true 64 bit kernel was available was released with leopard. (My machines still run 10,5, so I've never run it).
I believe (but do not know for sure) most people still run a 32 bit kernel.. And this is because of the issue of the wider availability of 32 bit drivers.
I don't know if the snow leopard default kernel has been moved to 64 bit for I have not upgraded nor have I bought a new mac ( nor will I, jobs is nasty, down with apple yadayadayada that sort of thing). My guess is snow leopard still defaults to a 32 bit kernel on boot.
So, what happens when you run a 32 bit app? Not much more. Your kernel is probably 32 bit. When you run a 64 bit app in userland, you likely context switch to a 32 bit kernel.
I would imagine that the context switching that occurs is.. not very elegant but I can see why they have to date done it this way.
So most people running OS X by default are in fact not running a true 64 bit OS though in fairness it supports a 64 bit userland so really, practically speaking, for most people out there, it's not worth quibbling about at least for now.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 14:07 GMT The BigYin
Why...
...do I need 64-bit beasts on my desktop if I have virtualised said desktop? From the past few days on El Reg it seemed like everyone and their donkey had a hankerig for virtualised desktops, so I am a bit puzzled why the 64-bit question even arises.
Outside of a few niche uses (e.g. video editing, large image manipulation and maybe some devs) who really needs more than 4gb chuntering along on their dekstop?
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 14:08 GMT theJML
I switched years ago
I've been running 64bit Vista/7/Ubuntu for the better part of 5 years now and haven't noticed any issues with drivers or support. Core2Duo's were 64bit, even the cheaper Celeron or Pentium-D's based on the same core have been out for a while. There's no reason in this day and age to still run a 32 Bit OS. and I get annoyed every time I see a 64bit capable laptop with 4GB of RAM ship with Windows7 or Vista 32bit.
I will have to say that Windows XP 64bit sucked because of the driver support. But luckily Vista was released 64bit at the get-go which pushed a lot of manufacturers to come up with 64bit drivers. 7 continues that trend and offers even better 32bit compatibility modes in case you do run into the issue.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 14:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
A lot of hype about 64 bit in consumer PC
First of all, traditionally almost all PCs have been sold with less than a decent amount of memory (remember the standard 256MB or 512MB memory also shared with video RAM ?). Now if you look around at retail PCs and especially laptops, they rarely show more than 3 or maximum 4 GB of RAM installed (all slots filled) and not a lot of people decide to throw away the exiting memory and buy new chips to fully maximize the RAM. For your info, trying to maximize RAM in a Dell laptop might add 20 - 25% to the final cost. So 32 of 64 bit we will never see a difference because the machines will always be sold with a minimum amount of memory.
Secondly, nobody ever said that in order to process files larger than 4GB requires more than 4GB or RAM. And, please excuse me, if you`re starting to work with CAD (AutoCAD at home WTF?) or Photoshop files larger than 2 or 3 GB the you've become what we call a professional and that requires professional hardware.
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Wednesday 16th March 2011 10:13 GMT david 12
decade for 64-bit Windows
Intel and MS thought the 64 bit Server business was going to be on the Itainium, so the 2001 Windows 64 was the Itanium edition. (In 2001, 64 bit unix was custom built to match specific hardware, so MS wasn't out of step in that regard)
Windows XP Pro 64 came out 2005, making 64 bit computing available for the masses. The reason most people haven't run 64 bit operating systems since then is -- most people didn't care and didn't need it. Even though you got both sets of installation disks for free -- 64 bit offered nothing to most people in 2005, let alone 1995.
On the other hand, there have always been those who wanted to say "my disk is 32 bits longer than your disk", and it looks like they are all showing up here.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 14:35 GMT DN4
Title
Title correction: `The Microsoft 64-bit question'. Everyone else has already moved on.
I've not seen any other desktops around than 64bit for 5+ years and have not seen much specific 64bit-induced problems either. But yeah, we don't run MS Windows except on a few legacy systems (and those are 32bit).
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 14:35 GMT Anton Ivanov
Several major points
1. 64 bit doubles the register space. This is actually noticeable on two counts:
1.1. There is a significant increase in speed and lower latency for OS-es/GUI frameworks that do not spend most of their time twiddling their thumbs in a UI switch statement. MacOSX, Linux+KDE get a significant boost. Linux+Gnome not so much but still noticeable.
1.2. Compilation at least for C/C++ takes one and a half the time.
2. The article is very windows centric. None of these problems exist on a MacOSX or Linux desktop. 64 bit truly shines on Linux to the point where even an archaic Athlon 64 3200+ with 2G RAM is worth putting in a 64 bit mode instead of keeping it to 32.
3. AMD specifically can change frequency/power levels faster when in 64 bit mode. So you get (though marginal) better performance on power-saved desktops and laptops as well.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 23:24 GMT peter 5
@doubling of register space
The ABI is significantly improved, too: with parameters being passed in register by default, and a pre-reserved "red zone" that eliminates the need for most "leaf" subroutines to ever twiddle with the stack. Unfortunately Microsoft limited their ABI to just four register parameters, whereas everybody else allows the first 6 integers and the first 8 floats to be passed in register. (And, as noted above, 64-bit mode uses XMM registers rather than the 8087) All of which contributes to the speed improvements. (The doubling of the register file is still a huge one, though.)
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 14:35 GMT Conrad Longmore
Try buying a machine without it..
Try buying a decently-specced consumer machine without it at the moment.. and it's very difficult. About half the decent laptops being punted in retailers seem to be 64 bit as they have 4GB of memory or over, but they're not always clearly labelled as such.
I think that right now we are seeing a sea change in what consumers are buying - with luck this should start to get more 64 bit drivers and apps out there, and that will help to make 64 bit Windows a bit more mature and corporation friendly.
I have just ordered myself a 64 bit Windows 7 machine for video and graphics work where my trusty 32 bit Windows XP machine struggles. I look forward to failing to get my apps to run on it.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 14:35 GMT The Gopher
Now all we need is....
for the software guys to actually write full 64-bit software and we can do away with 64-bit WOW portal for 32-bit apps. This of course will no doubt mean a total re-write of some software or a recompile with some newer libs that are both. I have a good example of software written that works fine on XP / Vista / Win 7 but only if it's the 32-bit version as wait for it they first wrote it when .NET 1.1 was still okay to use and it needs some part of that to run and guess what MS never did made a 64-bit version of .NET 1.1
Oh to be a software programmer.
Mines the one with the .NET 1.1 install CD in the pocket.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 14:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Was that merketing department?
First of all, addresses x64 architecture is limited to 52bit, remaining bits are used for other purposes by programmers and ignored by CPUs. Since its likely for CPus to stay backward compatible becaouse these bits used by programmers - CPus may never go beyond 52bit on current x64 architecture.
And the clear benefits are following:
1. 64bit general purpose registers, 16 registers instead of 8
2. All 64bit CPUs support SSE2. 16 registers, each 128bit wide
3. 64bit computations WERE Needed. SSE2 is limited to 64bit COMPUTATIONs as well.
Benefits are now over.
Obviously this is not enough for marketing purposes. So, read this "good article" again.
In addition, its unclear how high level compilers(C++ for instance) supports these new registers. I'd say support is not even satisfactory. Most heavy computation tasks like encryption is written in assembly language and high level compilers are not needed. Most likely programs like Photoshop or Autocad also have good chunk of assembly code.
Upgrading to x64 architecture LATER is likely to be cheaper because:
1. old CPus and other old hardware will become cheaper
2. and for instance Autocad(or any other soft) will keep file formats compatible between 32bit and 64bit version of the Autoca.. All you need is to install another x64 OS and needed soft (but you obviously have to buy it, and why not go for new and improved 2012 version).
Other issues.
1. Larger addresses(mostly 48bits) are a plus but only show off in intense tasks like video or graphics editors, data storage and maybe servers. But truly you can just load your files in chunks and save the RAM you have - modern 'programmers' are lazy though.
2. Device drivers do not win anything from x64 as they are IO intensive
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 14:38 GMT DrXym
64-bit is largely simple to transition to
I installed Win7 64-bit on a PC. Broadly speaking there hasn't been any hassle in doing it. Most popular apps (with the exception of Firefox) have 64-bit native clients, and 32-bit apps run just fine too. Biggest issue I have faced so far was Android's SDK didn't like my setup for some reason and I had to use Java 64-bit to rectify the issue. But when you install Java 64-bit you discover none of the JNI DLLs work any more so if you're running Eclipse and use Subversion for example you have to play "hunt the native 64-bit DLL" and it's all a bit manual and nasty.
So as an end user things are not quite smooth sailing but they're close enough. The benefits of 64-bit largely boil down to support for more memory and perhaps some marginal improvements in other ways.
My biggest beef with the whole 32-bit / 64-bit thing is why Microsoft made it such a pain in the arse. Why should a user have to choose their version? Why should devs have to build two versions of the same code? Why should companies have to QA two versions of the same code?
OS X didn't come in a 32/64-bit version. Both were one and the same and the transition was incremental and seamless. The OS saw what CPU you had and then enabled different code paths depending. Binaries were also "fat" which was a fancy way to say the same app package could run on different architectures. The funny part is watching MS announce Windows for ARM and realising any problems that came before now will look like a walk in the park compared to ARM vs x86 issues. It amazes me that MS haven't LEAPT on LLVM or similar tech so that devs nor end users really have to care what architecture they're writing against - just compile to LLVM and let the OS figure out how to run the code natively.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 15:39 GMT BristolBachelor
64 bit Firefox
"Most popular apps (with the exception of Firefox) have 64-bit native clients"
I'm confused. Are you saying that Firefox is not a popular app but has a native 63-bit client? Or do you mean Firefox is a popular app, but you didn't click the "64-bit version" when you downloaded it?
Been running Firefox 64-bit here for ages. (However have to run IE8 32-bit because the 64-bit version doesn't seem to be stable for me)
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 16:56 GMT Robert Carnegie
64 bit Firefox, is this another Linux joke?
According to http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Using%20Firefox%20with%20a%2064-bit%20Operating%20System?s=%2264-bit%22&as=s
"Using Firefox with a 64-bit Operating System
Firefox will work on 64-bit versions of Windows, but it is not a 64 bit application. See system requirements for details on all supported systems.
For details on how to install, see Installing Firefox on Windows.
Firefox will work on 64-bit versions of Mac OS X, but it is not a 64 bit application. See system requirements for details on supported systems.
For details on how to install, see Installing Firefox on Mac.
Firefox will work on 64-bit versions of Linux, but it is not a 64 bit application. See Installing Firefox on Linux for details on obtaining the proper version of Firefox for your Linux distribution.
Mozilla is working on providing 64-bit versions, but no schedule is set.
Contributors to this page: Chris_Ilias"
By the way, the link to Windows "System requirements" is broken. So maybe the whole lot is out of date.
Not that I'm concerned.
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Wednesday 16th March 2011 11:27 GMT DrXym
I know
I'm aware there is a 64-bit experimental build but it's not released officially yet. And doing so means plugins like Flash, Acrobat, Java, Silverlight etc don't work. And yes I want the plugins to work.
It's the usual problem of how to host 32-bit plugins in a 64-bit browser. I suppose that since Firefox can run most plugins in a separate app, maybe it's possible to have the client be native 64-bit and offer a 32-bit host / thunk exe for legacy plugins.
I expect some add-ons might also have 32-bit dependencies which would be another issue to think about.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 15:29 GMT gherone
Driver issue work around via VMWARE :)
I am in the process of migrating my desktop to Win 7 x64, and I do have a couple applications and peripherals which have no drivers and are too expensive to throw out and replace with newer hardware (film scanner with ICE for example). For me, XP Pro in a VM on my 8GB Win7x64 machine (free VMPlayer from VMWare) has enough performance (I am emulating a 2 core CPU with 3GB RAM on a AMD quad core 2.8GHz with 8GB RAM) and runs the drivers for my Adaptec USB to SCSI USB2XCHG with no issues in the VM (as well as the scanner drivers, of course). I've run some benchmarks inside the VM and directly in Win7x64, and the video performance hit is very small (73fps vs 74fps in furrmark 1.65 1280x1024 no AA, Radeon 6770 video card). It does feel a little slower, but it is quite usable, and not having to reboot in order to use a program or older peripheral makes the performance hit and cost of the XP license worthwhile for me.
It is stupid of MS not to allow XP drivers in some sort of emulation mode in Win 7 and forces me to get the functionality I need using third party tools - there is no tech reason why they cannot do it, if I can do it with free tools. I had to use an XP license for the emulated machine, but I can use all the tools and programs I need (including good old MS DOS programs for my chip burner and in-circuit emulators) in a window on the same Win 7 x64 desktop next to the other x64 friendly programs, and talking to the same shared network resources as Win 7...
The idea that "you cannot run 16 bit programs in a 64 bit OS" is just marketing BS - you can run whatever you want / need, DOS, Linux, Win98 programs, XP, etc. all side by side, with a common clipboard between OSes and VMs - and ***THANK YOU*** VMWARE for making your great VM player/creator available for free :)
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 15:38 GMT Robert Carnegie
The question isn't "How soon will I need 16 exabytes of RAM"
It is "How soon will I need 3.01 GB of RAM and without using PAE or something". These ones go up to 3.
If you're currently at the stage of deciding whether your next office-wide Windows PC platform should be 64 bit or not, then the answer is simply "Yes" if you intend to be using the equipment after next year, i.e. you're not the London Olympics ticket office or something. (I assume they close down sometime in autumn 2012.)
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 15:39 GMT Bassey
Software
The hardware drivers might be sorting themselves out but the software drivers are often still only 32-bit. We have an in-house written app that we send out to clients. It uses a very simple 1MB Access DB in the background and connects using JET database drivers. Lots of our clients are upgrading to 64-bit Win7 and complaining the software no longer works - MS has not released 64-bit JET drivers. Instead, they have switched over to ACE drivers which are not compatible. So we have to re-write the application.
MS themselves recommend installing the 32-bit version of Office 2010 as the 64-bit version has performance issues. The last time I checked there was no 64-bit flash.
I really wouldn't recommend going 64-bit for business just yet.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 15:39 GMT Anonymous Coward
2038-01-19 03:14:07 UTC
Upgrading to 64 bit is not a "must", but it would be nice to do it before 2038-01-19 03:14:07 UTC, when the time "will run out" :-) At least on *nix systems. A long time ago I started running 64 bit. Now-a-days I believe everything (OS, libs, applications) is 64 bit. True, I am a Linux / BSD user, so things look differently in my world.
As always since Intel 386 days, hardware is being under-utilized by most OS-es.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 15:40 GMT Jason Togneri
@ My 2p
"RAW image files are a few 10s of MB"
You're clearly not understanding. Take your 30MB RAW or even your 5MB JPEG. Open it in Photoshop. Apply some layers, some complex filters, etc. The original filesize is irrelevant - the final (unmerged) project can be some gigabytes, and takes many more of RAM while it's open. You benefit from more CPU cores, more RAM - and a 64-bit OS, with a 64-bit version of the program.
As to the whole 64-bit question, the driver and hardware support is long since here! I run an Asus P5Q with a Q9450 and 8GB DDR2. This is 2007's level of technology, and yet it's all perfect for (and uses) a 64-bit OS. Anyone who's bought a new machine or core components in at least the last 4-5 years should not even remember what a 32-bit OS is.
On the desktop, I don't know why they still sell them with 32-bit OS when there's absolutely no reason for it. On laptops, it's more understandable. I have a some years old dual-core Dell D620, and although it runs Windows 7, a 64-bit OS would actually be a detriment to it: addressing the extra memory registers would actually make a performance hit, while it's not physically capable of using > 4GB of RAM which would be the only real benefit at this stage. So there's an argument in there.
But seriously, on any desktop since 2006? There's just simply no reason for a 32-bit OS to even exist.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 20:55 GMT Oliver Mayes
Don't forget the timestamps
64bit is going to be essential in about 27 years when the 32bit timestamp rolls around in 2038.
The problem is that even that is just putting off the inevitable, according to my (admitedly mostly beer-fueled) calculations, 64bit timestamps will only buy us another 6.3 billion years.
We'd better have moved onto 128bit by then, but again that will only get us some more time. I'm afraid I don't know exactly how much because they called last orders so I had to stop working it out.
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Tuesday 15th March 2011 21:04 GMT Joe User
Go back to school, Manek
"A 64-bit-wide memory bus means that computers can access more memory addresses than under a 32-bit regime."
Memory bus? Let me clarify something for you. The width of the memory bus is a HARDWARE issue. The ability of the operating system to address memory is a SOFTWARE issue. Try "64-bit memory addressing" instead. Sheesh....
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Wednesday 16th March 2011 10:01 GMT Torben Mogensen
x86-32 to x86-64 is more than just 32 to 64 bits
As other people have mentioned, there are more registers and a completely different FP architecture, and these things mean more to performance than widening the registers and the address bus.
Going from 8 to 16 bits and from 16 to 32 bits meant more for performance, as you would often need integers that are longer than 16 bits (on the 8-bit BBC micro, integer variables in BASIC used 32 bits, for example), but most applications do fine with 32 bit integers. Hence, the impact of going to 64-bit integers is less.
So the main issue is address bus width, and this is indeed getting to be an issue, as even low-end PCs these days come with 4GB of RAM. However, even if the logical address space of teh CPU is 32 bits, a MMU can easily use more, so you don't have to swap out to disk if several jobs are running concurrently. Similarly, multicore processors can exploit more RAM. So it makes perfect sense for ARM to use 32-bit cores with an external 48-bit address bus. That said, ARM are in all likelihood working on a 64-bit design.
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
