On Friday 25 May 2007 04:53:26 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > What makes the difference between a 64 bit kernel, and a 32 bit kernel?
Use of 64-bit machine code [*], particularly instructions that make use of 64-bit native[**] registers[***]. * Defining this is more difficult, since that does not mean instruction requiring 64-bits to represent as many architectures have variable length instructions. ** Native is a difficult term to define, but I'm explicitly excluding the floating-point registers that have been 64-bit or 80-bit from my vague notion of native *** I guess this makes the Cell processor 128-bit? BTW, if the term "register" doesn't mean anything to you it's the fastest memory in your computer, closer to the ALU (etc.) than L1 cache, very small and expensive that are addressed differently than all other memory. -- Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =. [EMAIL PROTECTED] ((_/)o o(\_)) ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-' http://iguanasuicide.org/ \_/
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