I'm trying to convince somebody of the benefits of switching to a 64-bit OS but I'm having a hard time finding arguments other than "you can use more than 3GB RAM". Are there any other clearly-communicable benefits in having a 64-bit operating system?
Answer
- For x86-64 compared to IA-32, there is twice as many registers, which allows compilers to generate better code.
- On most operating systems, the 64-bit ABI allows the generation of better code than the 32-bit ABI (by passing parameters on registers instead of on the stack, for instance).
- Some things which are extensions on IA-32 are always present on x86-64, so programs can use them without needing to code a fallback (for instance a certain level of SSE).
- Last but not least, 64-bit
time_t, which will be more and more important as we get near 2038.
No comments:
Post a Comment