Re: Future of 64 bits

gtr <xxx@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> Is anything that is
> really making use of 64-bit going to stumble?

Besides the possibility of the Intel chips being 64-bits also, as
clvrmnky mentioned, I wonder what you mean by "really making use of
64-bit". My observation is that the huge majority of people have no idea
what this actually means, and that it is primarily a marketting buzz
word. Exceptions exist, but they are exceptions.

The marketting folk have "stolen" the term 64-bit so that it has almost
no actual technical meaning these days. Or perhaps I should say that its
meaning varies from product to product, depending on whatever meaning
makes that product look better. If you know a specific technical meaning
of "64-bit" system that your software depends on, then ask about that
specific meaning. If you don't know any more specifically than that the
marketting folk say it is a 64-bit product, then you don't have anything
to worry about.

Are you using more than 2 gb of memory in a single application? The most
common meaning of "64-bit" system in today's market-speak is one that
uses more than 32 bits for addresses. It often isn't very close to 64
bits, but it is well more than 32. The main point is that it is address
space - i.e. memory size. This isn't the total memory of your system,
but rathert the amount that a single application uses. As a general
rule, 32-bit systems have to play "tricks" to handle more than 2 gb of
memory in a single application. Sometimes they just can't do it; other
times the "tricks" cause significant speed penalty.

Another common martket-speak use of the term 64-bit is just to imply
that things run faster because of wider bus widths. Sometimes they do.
But sometimes things actually run more slowly (because those 64-bit
addresses take twice the bus bandwidth).

--
Richard Maine | Good judgement comes from experience;
email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgement.
domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain
.

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