Why is 64bit better

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Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Logically, I can see that constants and pointers, in some cases, will be larger so programs are likely to be larger. And the desire to allocate memory on word boundaries for efficiency would mean more white-space between allocations.

I have also heard that 32 bit mode on the x86 has to flush its cache when context switching due to possible overlapping 4G address spaces. For some tests it results in smaller code and faster execution than either 32b or 64b. This is most likely due to the fact that we have 16 x 64 bit general purpose registers and 16 x SSE registers instead of 8 x 32 bit general purpose registers and 8 x SSE registers. This is with the Intel ICC compiler Windows , may be different of course. Unless you need to access more memory that 32b addressing will allow you, the benefits will be small, if any.

When running on 64b CPU, you get the same memory interface no matter if you are running 32b or 64b code you are using the same cache and same BUS. While x64 architecture has a few more registers which allows easier optimizations, this is often counteracted by the fact pointers are now larger and using any structures with pointers results in a higher memory traffic.

Regardless of the benefits, I would suggest that you always compile your program for the system's default word size bit or bit , since if you compile a library as a bit binary and provide it on a bit system, you will force anyone who wants to link with your library to provide their library and any other library dependencies as a bit binary, when the bit version is the default available.

This can be quite a nuisance for everyone. When in doubt, provide both versions of your library. As to the practical benefits of bit Another benefit is that, assuming the compiler does a good job of optimizing, many of your arithmetic operations can be parallelized for example, placing two pairs of bit numbers in two registers and performing two adds in single add operation , and big number computations will run more quickly. That said, the whole bit vs bit thing won't help you with asymptotic complexity at all, so if you are looking to optimize your code, you should probably be looking at the algorithms rather than the constant factors like this.

EDIT : Please disregard my statement about the parallelized addition. This is not performed by an ordinary add statement A more accurate benefit, aside from the larger address space, is that there are more general purpose registers, which means more local variables can be maintained in the CPU register file, which is much faster to access, than if you place the variables in the program stack which usually means going out to the L1 cache.

I'm coding a chess engine named foolsmate. The best move extraction using a minimax-based tree search to depth 9 from a certain position took:. In addition to having more registers, bit has SSE2 by default. This means that you can indeed perform some calculations in parallel. The SSE extensions had other goodies too. But I guess the main benefit is not having to check for the presence of the extensions.

If it's x64, it has SSE2 available. If my memory serves me correctly. Only justification for moving your application to 64 bit is need for more memory in applications like large databases or ERP applications with at least s of concurrent users where 2 GB limit will be exceeded fairly quickly when applications cache for better performance. Only pointers are 64 bit. Compuatation intensive applications which require large decimals for highest accuracy not afforded by double on bit operating system.

Of course large disk based databases will also show improvement over 32 bit simply due to ability to use large memory for caching query plans and so on.

More data is transferred between the CPU and RAM for each memory fetch 64 bits instead of 32 , so bit programs can be faster provided they are written so that they properly take advantage of this. In general, though, 64 bit code is not necessarily any faster, and is usually larger, both for code and memory usage at runtime.

Any applications that require CPU usage such as transcoding, display performance and media rendering, whether it be audio or visual, will certainly require at this point and benefit from using 64 bit versus 32 bit due to the CPU's ability to deal with the sheer amount of data being thrown at it.

The computer uses two specific Program File directories. If your bit app is in the correct x86 folder, your computer will be able to access the correct bit version. Beyond that, the applications in your Program Files directory can access other available content. Galaxy Buds 2 Best Movies on Netflix. The future of immersive VR?

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