I tend to agree with Tim, but for different reasons. I say we need 64-bit to save more lives! When we conduct studies of various pharmaceutical compounds we end up with several gigabytes of data which we'd love to have all in-memory at once to speed up our analysis process. We basically end up having to keep the data on hard drives and sort thru it piece-meal. Unfortunately, our customers are just not gonna spend bazillions of bucks on expensive 64-bit eqipment from Sun et. al. because it is possible to do the work with kludgy 32-bit techniques. So, in essence, I could make a case for cheap 64-bit making new (better more useful) compounds available to doctors and pharmacies and ultimately make for a healthier world.
So, I'll assert that we need cheap 64-bit now.
I tend to agree with Tim, but for different reasons. I say we need 64-bit to save more lives! When we conduct studies of various pharmaceutical compounds we end up with several gigabytes of data which we'd love to have all in-memory at once to speed up our analysis process. We basically end up having to keep the data on hard drives and sort thru it piece-meal. Unfortunately, our customers are just not gonna spend bazillions of bucks on expensive 64-bit eqipment from Sun et. al. because it is possible to do the work with kludgy 32-bit techniques. So, in essence, I could make a case for cheap 64-bit making new (better more useful) compounds available to doctors and pharmacies and ultimately make for a healthier world. So, I'll assert that we need cheap 64-bit now.