64bit vs 32bit question

[Mike Matheny]

If I have 64bit drivers for all my hardware, would it run faster running the
64bit version? Does the 32 vs 64 issue have anything at all to do with
applications (if they run under 32 bit, will they run under 64bit?)

 

[Mark Rae]

If I have 64bit drivers for all my hardware, would it run faster running
the 64bit version?

Maybe very slightly, but I doubt you'd notice much difference...

Does the 32 vs 64 issue have anything at all to do with applications (if
they run under 32 bit, will they run under 64bit?)

Pretty much...

64-bit is really only of benefit if you have more than 4Gb RAM or you have a
specific need to run 64-bit software...

It won't be too long before 8Gb RAM is fairly common, and Microsoft have
released 64-bit Office - that's when 64-bit Vista will really take off...

 

[Harry Krause]

Maybe very slightly, but I doubt you'd notice much difference...


Pretty much...

64-bit is really only of benefit if you have more than 4Gb RAM or you have a
specific need to run 64-bit software...

It won't be too long before 8Gb RAM is fairly common, and Microsoft have
released 64-bit Office - that's when 64-bit Vista will really take off...

It's hard to imagine WORD any more bloated than it already is...

 

[Richard]

It has been suggested that even if you are running a real 64 bit processor,
with the current state of program code and drivers, there is a good chance
your system will run slower under a 64 bit operating system than a 32 bit
operating system with mature drivers and programs optomized for the existing
crop of two-core processors. Programs out there that need a real 64 bit
processor and a real 64 bit operating system are not running on Windows.

Richard.

 

[Mark Rae]

It has been suggested

Has it...? By whom...?

 

[Jeffrey S. Sparks]

Actually from what I understand the next version of Exchange server (2007)
is only coming out in 64 bit.

Jeff

 

[Mark Rae]

Actually from what I understand the next version of Exchange server (2007)
is only coming out in 64 bit.

Correct: http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/topquestions.mspx

 

[Stephan Rose]

Maybe very slightly, but I doubt you'd notice much difference...


Pretty much...

64-bit is really only of benefit if you have more than 4Gb RAM or you have
a specific need to run 64-bit software...

It won't be too long before 8Gb RAM is fairly common, and Microsoft have
released 64-bit Office - that's when 64-bit Vista will really take off...

Really? Explain why?

A 64-bit CPU does not perform arithmetic instructions any faster than 32-bit
CPU. 1 cycle = 1 cycle...period. And the time it takes for 1 cycle is
determined by clock rate.

So if a 64-bit addition command takes 1 cycle then adding 32-bit numbers
does not take HALF a cycle. It still takes 1 cycle. Same with 16-bit, 8
bit, etc.

Now explain to me again what use a word processor has for 64-bit?

There are only a few things that have any benefit from 64-bit CPUs:

More than 4 gigs of RAM. As far as Windows goes, with its tendancy to
expoentially increase its resource requirements with little added benefit I
can see why it will eventually need more than 4 gigs of RAM just to boot
up...

Applications, besides a bloated operating system, that even need more than 4
gigs of ram and therefore even have any *need* to address past 32-bit
boundaries.

Applications that perform lots of 64-bit arithmetic. By this I mean, they
are not adding "5+5" using 64-bit registers. I mean they are actually
performing arithmetic with numbers and results larger than 2^32.

Hint: Average office and user needs don't really fall into this category.

However, there also are some disadvantages in case of 64-bit that can
extremely easily outweigh any gains.

- 64-bit programs consume twice the space 32-bit programs do as an
instruction is now twice as wide. This may not affect your hard drive space
terribly much, but it does affect the space a program takes up in the
internal CPU cache. If, just to pick a number, a CPU has a 1 meg
instruction cache it can only store half as many 64-bit instructions as
32-bit instructions. That can adversely affect its performance.

- How wide is the memory bus? Even if the CPU is 64-bit capable but the
memory bus is only 32-bit wide then the CPU now has to do *two* memory
fetches instead of *one*. The memory bandwidth remains the same in that
scenario as with a 32-bit CPU, but you have to move twice the data across
it when accessing instructions not in cache or accessing 64-bit memory
data.

That essentially means that in a best-case scenario it takes the *same*
amount of time to move data to / from CPU and Memory.

That only applies with a 32-bit memory bus though, that goes away if the
memory bus is actually 64-bits wide but I am not sure if any normal 64-bit
systems actually have a 64-bit memory bus? I kind of doubt it as you could
no longer use the standard memory with it used in 32-bit systems or at a
very minimum would be required to use two 32-bit memory modules to act as 1
64-bit module.

- Due to the 64-bit alignment of data, a 64-bit CPU actually suffers a
performance penalty when accessing 32-bit data not on a 64-bit boundary.
The same effect occurs when a 32-bit (or 64-bit) CPU has to access 8-bit or
16-bit data on a non-32bit boundary. The reason is that non-aligned memory
accesses, while possible, carry a performance penality to move the data to
the correct location.

Simple example:

An 32-bit value located at memory address 4 would not carry a performance
penalty when loading it because it is on a 32-bit aligned address. One
operation.

However the same 32-bit value is not on an even 64-bit boundary. It is
halfway in between. So in order to load the value, it has to be loaded and
then shifted so that the bits are in the correct located of the register.
Two operations.

This is one of the reasons why 32-bits apps may not perform as well on
64-bit CPUs. Many times data will simply not be properly aligned and has
then to be aligned manually increasing cycle time for the instruction that
is affected.

Bottom line really, you are not likely to see any performance gains from a
64-bit word processor over a 32-bit word processor. Unless you are working
with unicode text and asian languages, chances are you don't ever need more
than 8 bits per character! And even with unicode text, it is 32-bits for a
bonded pair in a worst case scenario if I remember correctly.

Applications that need an extreme amount of precision are mostly what can
benefit from 64-bit arithmetic.

Just to really make the difference clear:

32-bit could map a distance of 4,294 kilomters with 1 mm precision. Plenty
precise enough position text on a 8.5 inch by 11 inch piece of paper.

64-bit could map a distance of 123,308au with 1 mm precision.
1 au = 149,598,000 km (92,955,887 miles).

Just to put that into some more perspective, Pluto is ~39 AU from the sun.

Such precision is a little overkill for positioning text don't ya think?

--
Stephan
2003 Yamaha R6

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[Mark Rae]

Really? Explain why?

The same reason that people climb mountains - because it's there...

As soon as 64-bit Office is released, the Microsoft marketing beast will
swing into full operation, and people will upgrade to 64-bit Vista just so
they can run 64-bit Office...

It really won't matter whether it runs any faster or slower than 32-bit
Office on 32-bit Vista - it'll be the latest version, and that alone will be
good enough for most users who don't know the difference. And, more
importantly, don't want to know the difference - they just want the latest
version because that's what they've been told to want...

Spouting calculations about bus width and internal CPU cache just flies over
the head of most users - but a big poster in PC World and rows and rows of
shiny boxes saying "64-bit Office - The Latest and Greatest" is very
powerful indeed...

Can you really not see this...?

 

[Steve Drake]

I think we may see managed office maybe with a twist of WPF. Maybe in Office
15.

Office 13 will be skipped (bad luck???) 14 will probs be more vista like and
I recon will come soon, we will probs see a new backend eg MOSS2??? with 15.
Anyone's guess really.


But...

64bits can = less cycels.

I am not good at writing long posts, but I am quite into computing and this
topic does interested me, so in the past I have read up on this very
subject. from my own experience, 64Bit SQL server EATS transactions, even on
a PC with less than 4GIG. I have seen this in our LABS.


From : http://bmagic.sourceforge.net/bm64opt.html

The key point to the high performance 64-bit C programming is wide integer
and FPU registers. Registers by definition are the expensive type of
computer memory. In a 64-bit CPU registers are 8 bytes wide. Often it
accompanied with a corresponding 128 or 256 bits wide memory bus. Our target
is effective utilization of these resources.

Lets take a short fragment of C code. Here we perform a bit AND operation on
a block of memory, representing an integer-based bitset block.

{
int a1[2048];
int a2[2048];
int a3[2048];

for (int i = 0; i < 2048; ++i)
{
a3 = a1 & a2;
}
}


Now we can optimize this code for 64-bit mode. (The code fragment here
relies on the long long C type which is not provided by some compilers.)

{
long long a1[1024];
long long a2[1024];
long long a3[1024];

for (int i = 0; i < 1024; ++i)
{
a3 = a1 & a2;
}
}

 

[Stephan Rose]

I think we may see managed office maybe with a twist of WPF. Maybe in
Office 15.

Office 13 will be skipped (bad luck???) 14 will probs be more vista like
and I recon will come soon, we will probs see a new backend eg MOSS2???
with 15. Anyone's guess really.


But...

64bits can = less cycels.

I am not good at writing long posts, but I am quite into computing and
this topic does interested me, so in the past I have read up on this very
subject. from my own experience, 64Bit SQL server EATS transactions, even
on a PC with less than 4GIG. I have seen this in our LABS.

<snip>

Yes, that is correct. I did forget to mention that one. Applications that
have to churn massive amounts of data or move massive amounts of data in a
method like in your small code snippet there and have at least a memory bus
64-bits wide will see an improvement in those scenarios.

Servers such as SQL Server, etc. can and do benefit from that. Fully agree
there. Especially if a server has lots of data suitable for 64-bit
registers.

But the average home user e-mailing, surfing the web and writing up a letter
in word? That's who I was primarily thinking about.

--
Stephan
2003 Yamaha R6

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å›ã®ã“ã¨å¿˜ã‚ŒãŸã¨ããŒãªã„ã‹ã‚‰

 

[Stephan Rose]

The same reason that people climb mountains - because it's there...

As soon as 64-bit Office is released, the Microsoft marketing beast will
swing into full operation, and people will upgrade to 64-bit Vista just so
they can run 64-bit Office...

It really won't matter whether it runs any faster or slower than 32-bit
Office on 32-bit Vista - it'll be the latest version, and that alone will
be good enough for most users who don't know the difference. And, more
importantly, don't want to know the difference - they just want the latest
version because that's what they've been told to want...

Spouting calculations about bus width and internal CPU cache just flies
over the head of most users - but a big poster in PC World and rows and
rows of shiny boxes saying "64-bit Office - The Latest and Greatest" is
very powerful indeed...

Can you really not see this...?

Oh don't get me wrong, I do see that very clearly. But that doesn't mean I
can't roll my eyes and shake my head over it. =)

--
Stephan
2003 Yamaha R6

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å›ã®ã“ã¨å¿˜ã‚ŒãŸã¨ããŒãªã„ã‹ã‚‰

 

[Stephan Rose]

Oh don't get me wrong, I do see that very clearly. But that doesn't mean I
can't roll my eyes and shake my head over it. =)

But you know what though? I do think that eventually though that may not
work all that well anymore. Eventually even the average user will begin to
question why they have to shell out a few hundred bucks yet again for a new
version of software that can't do more than their previous one beyond some
obscure new feature they never need and a completely different UI than what
they were used to.

It does kind of appear to me that things have reached a certain plateau and
that developers such as MS are just trying to get people to "upgrade" for
the sake of revenue.

Just take Office 2007. What does it *truly* offer over 2003? That the UI is
better is arguable because not everyone has the same preferences as far as
UI is concerned. Beyond the UI though, I can't recall a single thing I've
heard mentioned that makes it any better than 2003.

The new file format only introduces compatibility problems...and reasons to
force people to upgrade for no other reason than to be able to read files
that essentially contain data no different than the old files.

So what's the plan here? Release a new version of the Office every couple
years with a re-done UI and a new file format that stores the same text in
a different way? How long are people seriously going to play along with
that I wonder.

--
Stephan
2003 Yamaha R6

å›ã®ã“ã¨æ€ã„出ã™æ—¥ãªã‚“ã¦ãªã„ã®ã¯
å›ã®ã“ã¨å¿˜ã‚ŒãŸã¨ããŒãªã„ã‹ã‚‰

 

[Dale White]

"Exchange Server 2007 will not offer support for Itanium (IA-64) processors,
which are intended for more processor-intensive database and business
applications"

Now isn't that just funny. Exchange isn't processor intensive enough to run
on a IA-64

 

[Dale White]

Steve Drake wrote:

But the average home user e-mailing, surfing the web and writing up a
letter
in word? That's who I was primarily thinking about.

--

Hey don't skip us Gamers ! 64bit computing, excessive amount of ram and DX10
is suppose to take us to Nirvana and back x 2.

Who cares if so far, 64bit Computing, running a 64bit game is slower than 32
on 32 or 32 on 64. It's the future man ! Time to switch my 401k investments
to DRAM makers !

 

[Steve Drake]

I think we may see managed office maybe with a twist of WPF. Maybe in Office
15, who knows.

Office 13 will be skipped (bad luck???) 14 will probs be more vista like and
I recon will come soon, we will probs see a new backend eg MOSS2??? with 15.
Anyone's guess really.


But...

64bits can = less cycels.

This topic is of intrested to me, so in the past I have read up on this very
subject. from my own experience, 64Bit SQL server EATS transactions, even on
a PC with less than 4GIG. I have seen this in our LABS.

From : http://bmagic.sourceforge.net/bm64opt.html

The key point to the high performance 64-bit C programming is wide integer
and FPU registers. Registers by definition are the expensive type of
computer memory. In a 64-bit CPU registers are 8 bytes wide. Often it
accompanied with a corresponding 128 or 256 bits wide memory bus. Our target
is effective utilization of these resources.

Lets take a short fragment of C code. Here we perform a bit AND operation on
a block of memory, representing an integer-based bitset block.

{
int a1[2048];
int a2[2048];
int a3[2048];

for (int i = 0; i < 2048; ++i)
{
a3 = a1 & a2;
}
}


Now we can optimize this code for 64-bit mode. (The code fragment here
relies on the long long C type which is not provided by some compilers.)

{
long long a1[1024];
long long a2[1024];
long long a3[1024];

for (int i = 0; i < 1024; ++i)
{
a3 = a1 & a2;
}
}