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64-bit x86 Computing Reaches 10th Anniversary
illiteratehack writes "10 years ago AMD released its first Opteron processor, the first 64-bit x86 processor. The firm's 64-bit 'extensions' allowed the chip to run existing 32-bit x86 code in a bid to avoid the problems faced by Intel's Itanium processor. However AMD suffered from a lack of native 64-bit software support, with Microsoft's Windows XP 64-bit edition severely hampering its adoption in the workstation market."
But it worked out in the end.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Does 64 bits really mean that every program is twice as big as it needs to be? Every time I hear about an innovation that requires things to be bigger, I question the necessity.
If it's such a success, why does 64-bit software generally only run marginally faster than its 32-bit build? 64-bit binaries are larger and might run 103% at the speed of 32-bit if you're lucky.
Sure, it helps with the 4GB memory space limit, but so can smart memory management and other approaches.
I could see it being useful for super-computing things, but in general, there still just doesn't seem to be a point.
Wow, just wow. Do you actually work in the software field???
MIPS and Alpha ask power pc to get off their lawn.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
do you? for average PC applications (browsing the web, e-mail, office documents) 64 bit gives no advantage. for the above-average applications (multimedia creation/editing, CADD, running multiple VMs, ) it's very helpful.
1) Yes, I do.
2) You are so wrong that it's actually funny.