The pros and cons of going 64-bit
Deb Shinder
TechRepublic
August 21, 2006, 15:10 BST
If you're planning to invest in new computers, it's worth considering
whether to make the move to 64-bit technology. Does the extra scalability
justify
the expense?
The wave of the future is undoubtedly 64-bit technology. 64-bit processors
have been pretty common in high end servers since 2004 and now 64-bit
desktop
machines are being offered by most PC vendors. Since 64-bit CPUs can handle
more memory and larger files, and 64-bit processors are backwardly
compatible
with 32-bit operating systems and applications, it seems obvious that 64-bit
hardware provides you with the ultimate in scalability. If you're in the
position
of buying new computers in the near future, you may be wondering whether
it's worth the expense to go 64-bit. Let's take a look at some of the pros
and
cons.
What is 64-bit processing anyway?
When we talk about "bits" as applied to computer processors, we're talking
about the maximum-size number that the processor's registers can store and
handle
at one time. This means a 64-bit processor can handle numbers that are twice
as large as those handled by a 32-bit processor. Practically speaking, what
does this mean to you?
Advantages of 64-bit systems
Just as the transition from 16-bit to 32-bit PCs in the 1980s greatly
increased computing power, the leap from 32-bit to 64-bit will double the
amount of
data that a processor can handle on each clock cycle.
A big advantage of the 64-bit system is its ability to support more system
memory. Most computer users know that programs run faster (and you can run
more
programs simultaneously) if you add more RAM. Unfortunately, 32-bit chips
can generally only address 4GB of memory.
There was a time when 4GB of RAM seemed like more than enough memory for any
computer, but that's no longer true with today's memory-hungry applications.
And it's not just heavy gamers who need lots of memory. The popularity of
running multiple servers as virtual machines on a single physical computer
has
vastly increased the memory needs of those machines, and even on
workstations, memory-intensive graphics and video applications, Computer
Aided Design
(CAD) programs, computer simulation and modelling software and the like are
pushing the upper limits of that 4GB ceiling.
64-bit processors, on the other hand, can address enormous amounts of memory
- up to 16 exabytes. To put that number into perspective, it's equal to over
16,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes, or 16 billion gigabytes. You can be pretty
sure that by the time you need more memory than that, the 64-bit system you
buy today will be long gone. Of course, the amount of memory you can install
in a system is limited by its motherboard, the number of memory slots it has
and the size of memory modules that are available. Many current 64-bit
motherboards will accommodate 8 to16GB or more of RAM.
By allowing for the addressing of more RAM, 64-bit processing can greatly
improve video encoding and decoding, CAD, VMs and some other applications.
But
does more bits mean better performance? Well, maybe and maybe not. You'll
see a performance increase for applications that use 64-bit integers, but
don't
expect most of your apps to run any faster than they do on your 32-bit
systems. And your web browser will still be limited by your Internet
connection
speed, your word processing program will still be bottlenecked by how fast
you can type, and so on. In fact, there can be a slight performance decrease
caused by the switch to a 64-bit processor, because the larger memory
address pointers take up twice as much room in the cache.
What's available in 64-bit?
There's little doubt that 64-bit computing will eventually make 32-bit
systems obsolete. Major hardware and software vendors are all headed in that
direction.
Intel shipped the 64-bit Itanium for high-end servers way back in 2001. AMD
introduced its 64-bit Opteron and Athlon 64 processors in 2003.
.and Intel brought out its EM64T line, updating versions of its Xeon and
Pentium 4 lines to 64-bit the next year. In 2005, IBM came out with a
dual-core
64-bit PowerPC processor that was code-named Antares, and AMD released
dual-core 64-bit Opterons for servers and Athlon 64s for desktops. Today AMD
also
offers the Sempron and Turion 64, Intel has the Itanium 2 and other
platforms, such as MIPS, SPARC and HP's PA-RISC, also support 64-bit
computing.
Linux was the first operating system to run on Intel's Itanium. For
workstations, Microsoft offers the Windows XP 64-bit edition for the IA-64
(Itanium)
architecture and the Windows XP x64 edition for AMD64 and Intel EM64T
architectures. Windows Server 2003 Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter
editions all
come in 64-bit versions. Mac OS X "Tiger" can run 64-bit applications on
PowerPC G5 64-bit systems, and the next version ("Leopard") is expected to
be
a full 64-bit OS.
Should you upgrade to 64-bit for best scalability?
To take full advantage of 64-bit technology, you need 64-bit applications -
and that's where the problem lies. While a number of software vendors in the
business space provide native 64-bit server applications (some examples
include Microsoft's 64-bit enabled SQL Server 2005, IBM's Tivoli Storage
Manager,
e-commerce software from Computer Associates and software from Oracle and
SAP) - and in fact, Microsoft made waves by announcing that Exchange 2007
would
be 64-bit only - there are far fewer desktop/consumer level applications
available in 64-bit versions.
Should you upgrade now?
If this technology is out there, and the industry is moving towards a 64-bit
takeover, does that mean you should buy only 64-bit computers as you add new
systems or replace old ones? The answer is (as is so often the case): it
depends.
One of the biggest problems with making the transition to 64-bit is finding
the appropriate drivers for hardware peripherals. If you need to use older
devices,
you may want to think twice about making the move to 64-bit. On the other
hand, if you need to run memory-intensive applications that will benefit
from
the larger memory space offered by 64-bit systems, spending the extra bucks
to upgrade will probably pay off in the long run.
Your best strategy might be to go to 64-bit when you replace servers or
install new ones, then upgrade to 64-bit for graphics and CAD workstations
and the
like. As for those workstations that are used for ordinary office
productivity software, email, web and the like, you probably don't need the
scalability
of 64-bit anytime soon, so you can save money by sticking with 32-bit
systems there.
One thing you can be sure of: if you do buy 64-bit hardware, you'll have
more scalability. After all, even if you don't plan to upgrade your
operating systems
yet, you can always run 32-bit software on the 64-bit machines until you're
ready to go to the new OS.
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