On Fri, 3 Oct 2003 06:21:38 -0500 "Paul" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Let's see, the first and most obvious issue would be transferring 64 bit > pointers per cycle instead of two 32 bit pointers in the same cycle. Sure, > if I had a large enough data set, it would speed things up greatly. But the only thing which executes 64-bit code is the operating system kernel, not the actual applications. The applications are fully 32-bit. The 64-bit operating system kernel supports running both 32-bit and 64-bit applications. The 64-bit kernel doesn't have anything to do with processor speed. But it is a fact that every 64-bit _PROCESSOR_ that Sun ever sold is faster than basically all of the 32-bit processors they ever sold. So whatever perceived or real difference in performance you think you'll take due to the fact the sparc64 systems use a 64-bit kernel is entirely nullified by how much faster the sparc64 chips are both in terms of MHZ, instruction parallelism, and memory bandwidth.
