• What are the advantages to 64bit operating systems?
    23 replies, posted
The only thing I ever really understood about 64bit operating systems was that they allowed you to have more ram. Now that might be a nice feature to have, but even today I don't see the point in a normal user having more than 4gb of ram anyways. Are there any other up sides to 64bit operating systems?
No, but there aren't any down sides.
[quote=Wikipedia]A common misconception is that 64-bit architectures are no better than 32-bit architectures unless the computer has more than 4 GB of main memory. This is not entirely true: * Some operating systems reserve portions of process address space for OS use, effectively reducing the total address space available for mapping memory for user programs. For instance, Windows XP DLLs and other user mode OS components are mapped into each process's address space, leaving only 2 to 3 GB (depending on the settings) address space available. This restriction is not present in 64-bit operating systems. * Memory-mapped files are becoming more difficult to implement in 32-bit architectures, especially due to the introduction of relatively cheap recordable DVD technology. A 4 GB file is no longer uncommon, and such large files cannot be memory mapped easily to 32-bit architectures; only a region of the file can be mapped into the address space, and to access such a file by memory mapping, those regions will have to be mapped into and out of the address space as needed. This is a problem, as memory mapping remains one of the most efficient disk-to-memory methods, when properly implemented by the OS. * Some programs such as data encryption software can benefit greatly from 64-bit registers (if the software is 64-bit compiled) and effectively execute 3 to 5 times faster on 64-bit than on 32-bit. * Some complex numerical analysis algorithms are limited in their precision by the errors that can creep in because not all floating point numbers can be accurately represented with a small number of bits. Creeping inaccuracies can lead to incorrect results, often leading to attempts to divide by zero, or to not identify two quantities as being identical for practical purposes. International Computers Limited added 128-bit support to the ICL 2900 Series in 1974 largely as a result of requests from the scientific community.[/quote] Some advantages of 64 bit.
Other than being able to use more RAM, the main benefit would be that certain computation-intensive programs (like 3D renderers or CAD software, I think?) have 64-bit versions that compute faster. If you don't know of any such programs, you probably don't need to worry about getting a 64-bit OS. Unless you do a lot of multitasking, in which case having tons of RAM would probably help.
Don't cut it off at more RAM. It means more [i]addressable space[/i]. If you have some big files that are larger than 4GB, then you have to dance around with IO paging in order to address it all in 32 bits. In 64 bits, you can just mmap that sucker and it's there. (regardless if you have the physical memory for it or not. Virtual addressing is nice that way in that the OS can handle disk IO operations in the background in order to make it appear that you have the full address space available for allocation. mmap is a tool that allows us to magically interpret a file as shared memory, when it is simply handled as a bunch of pages of memory out on disk. The OS handles this remarkably seamlessly.)
64-bit is better period. The 64-bit versions of Win7, Vista, XP, and Ubuntu all boot faster, for one, that and the RAM ceiling is actually really limiting, if you do a lot of physics/math or 3D rendering, 8 or 16GBs of RAM is ridiculously handy. Once again, memory mapping.
64bit doesn't have the [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem[/url] [editline]08:12AM[/editline] It does however have the Year 292,277,026,596 problem :v:
When 32bit era ends you don't have to upgrade if you already have :smug:
[QUOTE=rieda1589;18830397]It does however have the Year 292,277,026,596 problem :v:[/QUOTE] But I don't want to have to do ANOTHER clean install in several million years just to update to an x128 OS. :saddowns:
[QUOTE=Zeke129;18831599]But I don't want to have to do ANOTHER clean install in several million years just to update to an x128 OS. :saddowns:[/QUOTE] Several [b]HUNDRED BILLION[/b] years*
64-bit CPUs are a farce. They aren't even really 64-bit; the max I've seen is 48-bit. And the Core 2 in my laptop is only 40-bit. I'm not going by box specs, I'm going by what the kernel finds. [code] cupcakes@localhost ~ $ cat /proc/cpuinfo ... model name : AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 620 Processor ... address sizes : 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual [/code] I feel cheated.
I don't know about Windows 7, but 64bit version of Vista has a rather annoying "feature", it's Microsoft being a bitch about unsigned drivers. There's no way to disable the driver checks permanently, you have to disable it in the boot options every time you start up the computer if you want to use unsigned drivers. [editline]03:10PM[/editline] [QUOTE=PvtCupcakes;18832721]64-bit CPUs are a farce. They aren't even really 64-bit; the max I've seen is 48-bit. And the Core 2 in my laptop is only 40-bit. I'm not going by box specs, I'm going by what the kernel finds. [code] cupcakes@localhost ~ $ cat /proc/cpuinfo ... model name : AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 620 Processor ... address sizes : 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual [/code] I feel cheated.[/QUOTE] I think that's the limit of how much memory it can adress, with 48bits you can have :siren:!!!256TB!!!:siren: of ram. Your cpu is fully capable of doing 64bit calculations.
[QUOTE=PvtCupcakes;18832721]64-bit CPUs are a farce. They aren't even really 64-bit; the max I've seen is 48-bit. And the Core 2 in my laptop is only 40-bit. I'm not going by box specs, I'm going by what the kernel finds. [code] cupcakes@localhost ~ $ cat /proc/cpuinfo ... model name : AMD Athlon(tm) II X4 620 Processor ... address sizes : 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual [/code] I feel cheated.[/QUOTE] [quote=Wikipedia]Without further qualification, a 64-bit computer architecture generally has integer and addressing registers that are 64 bits wide, allowing direct support for 64-bit data types and addresses. However, a CPU might have external data buses or [b]address buses with different sizes than the registers[/b], even larger (the 32-bit Pentium had a 64-bit data bus, for instance). The term may also refer to the size of low-level data types, such as 64-bit floating-point numbers.[/quote] 40-bit still lets you have 1TB of RAM so you're not cheated out of much.
So guys, when is 512-bit comming?
2013.
[QUOTE=Muscar;18833811]So guys, when is 512-bit comming?[/QUOTE] Well 128-bit time overflows at 170,141,183,460,469,231,731,687,303,715,884,105,727 AD So I'd imagine some time before then.
[QUOTE=rieda1589;18833884]Well 128-bit time overflows at 170,141,183,460,469,231,731,687,303,715,884,105,727 AD So I'd imagine some time before then.[/QUOTE] Even then the next step would be 256-bit, long time before that isn't good enough.
[QUOTE=rieda1589;18833884]Well 128-bit time overflows at 170,141,183,460,469,231,731,687,303,715,884,105,727 AD So I'd imagine some time before then.[/QUOTE] Ok, wake me up when that happens. What's with the dumb rating? Someones sarcasm meter seems to be broken.
[QUOTE=rieda1589;18833884]Well 128-bit time overflows at 170,141,183,460,469,231,731,687,303,715,884,105,727 AD So I'd imagine some time before then.[/QUOTE] They don't upgrade to 64-bit just for time. [editline]04:16PM[/editline] [QUOTE=Yumyumbublegum;18827225]No, but there aren't any down sides.[/QUOTE] Hardware compatibility for some devices.
[QUOTE=gparent;18834374]They don't upgrade to 64-bit just for time. [editline]04:16PM[/editline] Hardware compatibility for some devices.[/QUOTE] Well I was talking to some programmer from ibm (he came into or school) he says that there are a few 128bit OS's but they are still rare.
Think of 64-bit as a new DirectX version (to use a stupid analogy). It's just a phase moving from outdated to updated. In other words, it's a mistake to pick a 32-bit OS by today's standards of memory addressing. The [i]memory addressing[/i] is, in a nutshell, the OS allocating memory. Memory being EVERYTHING: keyboard, mouse (that's right, when you press a fucking button it uses a tiny bit of memory), GPU memory, RAM etc. etc. - RAM being the last priority. [B] A real world example:[/B] My friend and I have two laptops, each with 4 GB RAM, 512 MB dedicated GPU memory along with around 1,7 GB shared GPU memory. I have 64-bit. He has 32-bit. While idling, I have around 2,2 GB available RAM, while he has around 800 MB (note: we were both using very close to the same amount of RAM), which is stupid when he essentially could benefit as much as I do with a 64-bit OS. I've been using 64-bit OS for a year and a half, and I have no problems what so ever [B]AT ALL[/B]. People talking about incompatible software/hardware are strange blokes trying to run software from '95 on a '09 computer. I've been playing BF2 for a long time without any flaw [B]EVEN THOUGH[/B] it actually notifies me when I launch the game it hasn't been tested to work on other than 32-bit. The people complaining about CPUs not being 64-bit compatible either have horribly outdated systems or cheaped out on an Intel Atom. CPUs have been fully 64-bit ready since Pentium 4. As a fact, supercomputers have been using 64-bit since 1960! Not that it matters, but...never mind. [B] Conclusion:[/B] you're limiting yourself if you still want to use a 32-bit OS. The standards of the typical user's memory needed to allocate was cool for a 32-bit OS about 3 years ago, it's time to move on and follow the new standards. Please correct me if I'm wrong, I didn't read up on this, I just wrote what I remember I hope my post was helpful.
Another benefit I saw when studying the AMD64 address translation spec was that it extended the addressing modes. No longer are pages relegated to a fixed 4KB as has been the x86 standard since the dark ages. Now you can have 2MB and 1GB pages. This makes a huge difference in modern applications that use lots of memory, especially when you are operating with a set-associative cache. It reduces the number of cache page-swaps (but of course they are slower due to larger sizes) so a program demonstrating good locality rules will perform remarkably better in this architecture.
support higher amount of RAM i suppose my bad... bad reading bow down to me
[QUOTE=Cathbadh;18839329]Another benefit I saw when studying the AMD64 address translation spec was that it extended the addressing modes. No longer are pages relegated to a fixed 4KB as has been the x86 standard since the dark ages. Now you can have 2MB and 1GB pages. This makes a huge difference in modern applications that use lots of memory, especially when you are operating with a set-associative cache. It reduces the number of cache page-swaps (but of course they are slower due to larger sizes) so a program demonstrating good locality rules will perform remarkably better in this architecture.[/QUOTE] Interesting.
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