The sum total is that speaking for myself, I won't go back to an Intel 32 bit system if I can help it. 64 bit systems are fast! They save a lot of time.
Perhaps I'm making a stupid point, but perhaps there is a compiler switch you can turn on somewhere (or maybe the configure script in the *tar.gz source code already does it) that optimizes for a 64 bit system. Hmmm, perhaps I can rerun autoconf and libtool and get this magic to happen.
None of the examples you site indicate that 64 bits may be the sole factor-- or even a factor at all-- in the performance boon you are seeing. For that matter, you might find that a 32 bit system with otherwise the same hardware would perform even better!
In all cases, it sounds like the 64 bit machine also has faster drives, faster memory, and a faster primary bus. In other words, it sounds like the 64 bit machine is also coincidentally the most modern/advanced machine you have tested on. Also, your example mentions moving a medium sized data set [109,000 rows] from a relatively primitive database on a primitive operating system to a modern database running on a modern OS with a fairly new machine. Of course it is going to be faster and, given the number of variables changed, the move to 64 bit could be purely coincidental. More likely than not, MySQL/Linux cached all of the data in memory and the primary speed difference was because that system didn't have to hit the disk where your wife's laptop was stuck sipping data off a slow laptop drive due to the lack of decent caching [assuming an older MSFT OS here -- they do much better in modern versions].
As for installing Linux, that process is primarily I/O bound. Your example specifically mentions that it is dependent upon the machine's resources. Of course it is; I would be willing to bet that if you were to install Linux on any relatively new 32 bit based Intel system with a ultra-wide SCSI controller driving a 15,000 RPM drive, it'd beat the socks off the most spanked out Athlon 64 system installing to a 5,400 RPM EIDE drive.
As for SQLite, it is unlikely that you will see any performance difference between a 32 bit or 64 bit compile of SQLite unless you are specifically working with working sets that are larger than 4GB -- that is, working sets that would not fit in a 32 bit process.
When compiled to run as a 64 bit process, any program will use more memory simply because data alignments are typically on a wider boundary and pointer sizes are that much larger.
"64 bit computing" is one of the great myths of marketing foisted upon the computing industry. Now that "ghz ghz ghz" seems to be largely dead as a marketing myth, it would seem that "64 bits or die" is the next great frontier.
There are real advantages to 64 bit, but "everything is just faster with a recompile" is definitely not one of them.
b.bum
