[wplug] (OT) 32 more bits

[Michael A. Smith]

I recall back before the Itanium scandal there were some benchmarks at 
which 64-bit machines did not fare better than their half-bitted cousins.

I suspect that those numbers were primarily due to the fact that those 
64-bit machines had to do a great deal of 32-bit emulation. 64-bit 
machines are doubtless somewhat faster than 32-bit machines now.

One of the major benes of 64-bit architecture is the removal of the 4GB 
memory limit. 64-bit machines can theoretically have, what, 2TB of memory? 
That's enough to store most any database I can imagine (although the 
military can probably astound my limited imagination) entirely in memory, 
which is A Good Thing.

OTOH, 2TB of memory isn't all that useful for Joe User right now, but it 
might be in the future.

I don't know much about the direct improvements in speed that 64-bit 
arches will bring. I suspect increases in processing 
speed/bogoMIPS/zippedydoodahs will be due as much to bus, processor, 
software and motherboard architecture improvements as to more address 
space.

Peace,
Mike

On Tue, 26 Apr 2005, Brandon Kuczenski wrote:

> What with Microsoft's announcement of plans to release "three new versions" 
> of Windows that run on 64-bit architecture, it's been all over the news 
> lately.  Of course, 64-bit Linux has been around for awhile (it's been, what, 
> a year since AMD first released an Athlon 64?).
>
> Meanwhile, most of us who have personal or otherwise light-duty servers are 
> probably getting by just fine with 3, 5, 10 year old equipment. Obviously 
> industrial servers have it a little more tough, but I'm not mistaken when I 
> say 1 64-bit machine != 2 32-bit machines, right?  I just don't see what's 
> the big deal.
>
> I'm not too well-versed in a lot of hardware issues, so I would like to hear 
> what more knowledgable people (you) think about 64-bit architecture. What 
> bottlenecks does it remove?  What are its primary benefits? Compared to CPU 
> speed? How much of a performance increase would someone see on an otherwise 
> identical high-end system (say, 2-3 GHz) that runs a 32 vs. a 64 bit CPU?  On 
> servers? on desktops?  in toasters?
>
> etc.
>
> I suppose it's not a well-posed question, but I was just curious what people 
> think.  I read an article that said the 32-bit address space was too small, 
> that it made it "inherently harder to run more applications on a single box 
> [1]."  That sounds like a lot of hooey to me, but like I said, I'm not too 
> well-versed in hardware.
>
> -Brandon
>
> [1] http://www.integratedmar.com/ECL.cfm?item=DLY042605-5
>
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