[arch-dev-public] Processor Generation++
eliott
eliott at cactuswax.net
Tue Mar 18 23:07:29 EDT 2008
> As far as I know, one of the biggest 'wins' for 64bit is in
> addressing, for anything above a 32 bit address space (more than 4gb).
>
> You have to have pae support on a 32bit proc (and enable it in the os)
> to hit more than 4gb, which does some type of mapping from 64 bit onto
> a 32 bit address space. Memory addresses have to be translated, and
> not a straightforward mapping. Memory access becomes a bit slower.
> Add to this that the mapping can be different between processes. So if
> you have processes sharing memory (ie for ipc), you get even more
> overhead as it has to be translated, then translated again, to be
> referenced by each site of a shared memory block.
>
> more about pae: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension
>
> 64 bit has some downsides. I think the hybrid x86_64 chips have weird
> pipelines to the cpu to support both 32bit and 64bit mode..where it
> does some weird split into two 32bit words, and uses part of each
> chunk to tell which mode it is in.. thus reducing you by addressible
> memory by some factor. Not sure about this one..not really that much
> of a hardware guy.
>
> Also, the word size is larger, so there is some overhead. Memory
> pointers take up more space, etc. So random app X might use a bit more
> ram on 64bit than on 32bit. *shrug*
>
> I am sure some of the above is off, and I am sure the more hardware
> centric folks in the audience will point out my inaccuracies.
>
oh. also..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit
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