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The Sacrifices of Portablility?

Posted by Cliff on from the ease-of-design-vs-processor-efficiency dept.

hackwrench asks: "There is lots of talk about writing portable programs, but this pursuit has resulted in a lot of processor features going unused. One example is being able to write a program that purposely uses a combination of 16-bit and 32 bit. I know there are arguments that writing solely in one or the other is a performance advantage, but what are the factors involved? Is the slowness of such a combination inherent in its design or is it a result of current hardware. We are beginning to replace systems and programs designed primarily to run in pure 32-bit mode with systems designed to run in pure 64-bit mode, so I ask: Is such purity really worth it?"

1 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Wth? by ratatask · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    So you decided to post a /. story but you didn't have anything to say ?

    >One example is being able to write a program that purposely uses a combination of 16-bit and 32 bit.
    Idiotic example. What are you talking about ? 16 and 32 bit data types ? If so you don't trust your compiler to optimize ? damn. Oh, you're tlking a bout code then ? a combination of 16/32 bit is amazingly rare. For app practical purposes it means running DOS programs on windows, and speed isn't an issue here. Sorry.

    >We are beginning to replace systems and programs designed primarily to run in pure 32-bit
    >mode with systems designed to run in pure 64-bit mode,
    Converting a 32bit application to 64 but will mean nothing, unless it's a special purpose program that can take advantage of the expanded address space. Consider it close to nil percent of desktop software, but important for those few that uses it.

    However hardware vendors will jump to 64 bit, they will support it, develop it and 64 bit systems will in short be the ones pushing more GHz through marketing ads. And running in 32 bit compatibility will have a (small) performance hit.
    So yes. It's worth it from a performance point for laymans, in the near future, but likely they wont have any use of the gains.
    Which area of "worth it" did you want to discuss ? Performance, reliability, investement or something else.
    And for whom ? Weather centers needing big iron to predict next weeks weather ?