Hi, same here.
Many interpreted languages (like Python) are affected by this as they tend to be quite pointer-happy. As pointer-size doubles from 32bit to 64bit we find that in most applications we have about 70% increase when moving to 64-bit ending up with 1.7 as much memory as before. So we also currently run applications in 32-bit virtual machines and rather use many 3GiB processes than a few bigger ones. Moving from 3GiB to 64bit requires about 5GiB just to even out the pointer-size effects. Supposedly the amd64 instruction set has some benefits that make e.g. Python run faster on certain computational stuff, but I don’t have prove for that. In the long term we will include 64-bit in the mix anyway as some applications (Mongo, sigh) are quite trigger happy with allocating virtual (non residential) memory for mmapping insane numbers of insanely large files … Christian > On 12 May 2015, at 11:59, Lluís Batlle i Rossell <[email protected]> wrote: > > My experience is equal with Marco, about memory and my usage of i686. i686 > is important for me too. > > On Tue, May 12, 2015 at 11:43:47AM +0200, Marco Maggesi wrote: >> I use 32 bit a lot. >> First of all, I use it on some old machines with 32bit hardware. >> But, more importantly, I use it regularly on virtuabox and xen virtual >> machines. >> In my experience, for most of my use cases the 32bit require less memory >> (which is often not abundant on virtual instances) and it is thus generally >> faster for many computing tasks . I made some tests with HOL Light (the >> theorem prover). The bare program has memory occupation which almost the >> double in the 64bit version (~1.2Gb) with respect to the 32bit version >> (~0.7Gb). On a virtual machine with 2Gb of ram, the 32 bit it is often >> 10%-20% faster on typical usage and 50% faster or more when the computation >> requires more memory. >> In my experience, the version 32 bit can be more convenient than the 64bit >> version in a variety of situations. >> So, please, do not give-up with 32 bit support. >> Marco >> >> >> >> 2015-05-12 11:08 GMT+02:00 Luke Clifton <[email protected]>: >> >>> +1 >>> >>> This seems like a good idea. >>> >>> On 12 May 2015 at 06:45, William Kennington <[email protected]> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Maybe it would make more sense to only build the i686 builds if our >>>> tested set of x86_64 binaries build correctly. We would still release with >>>> both but it would cut down on a lot of redundant failures. >>>> >>>> On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 3:39 PM Ryan Trinkle <[email protected]> >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>>> I encountered an i686 user just the other day! I don't use it >>>>> personally, but having solid support in Nix was fantastic, especially >>>>> because older, 32-bit machines tend to be slower, which makes Nix's binary >>>>> caching functionality even more important. >>>>> >>>>> On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 6:36 PM, Shea Levy <[email protected]> wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Hi all, >>>>>> >>>>>> Do we still have users running 32-bit machines? It would reduce the >>>>>> load on >>>>>> hydra significantly if we could drop support for i686, though of course >>>>>> if >>>>>> people are still relying on it we shouldn't make the change yet. >>>>>> >>>>>> ~Shea >>>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>>> nix-dev mailing list >>>>>> [email protected] >>>>>> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> nix-dev mailing list >>>>> [email protected] >>>>> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev >>>>> >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> nix-dev mailing list >>>> [email protected] >>>> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev >>>> >>>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> nix-dev mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev >>> >>> > >> _______________________________________________ >> nix-dev mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev > > > -- > (Escriu-me xifrat si saps PGP / Write ciphered if you know PGP) > PGP key D4831A8A - https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/ > _______________________________________________ > nix-dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev — Christian Theune · [email protected] · +49 345 219401 0 Flying Circus Internet Operations GmbH · http://flyingcircus.io Forsterstraße 29 · 06112 Halle (Saale) · Deutschland HR Stendal HRB 21169 · Geschäftsführer: Christian. Theune, Christian. Zagrodnick
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