11/15   Can someone tell me why 64 bit machines are the future? I
        program a lot of things and I rarely need 2^32 memory.
        My guess why people move to 2^64 is because of RAM usage, but
        how the heck do you use up 2^32? And regarding addressing and
        page tables, wouldn't the size just blow up with 64 bit machines?
        \_ It's mostly in high-end engineering practices. Our ASIC CAD
           tools, for example, use memory like there's no tomorrow.
           Simulation waveforms and netlists take up a lot of space
           and many of our tools crap out on a 32-bit platform.
        \_ You don't write code to use up 2^32 memory.  The stupid people in
           Redmond who wrote your OS do.
           \_ Umm... high-performance computing has been wanting more than
              4GB of memory for a long time now, and that's because it needs
              that much, not because it's bloatware.
           \_ It'a conspiracy between M$ and Intel.  If M$ doesn't keep on
              producing bloatware, nobody would be upgrading their hardward
              again and again, and Intel will be out of business.
        \_ The consumer doesn't need it right now, but industrial and
           scientific users do, and they use much the same chips you do.
           Also, games are using more and more memory, not from pure bloat
           but from the need to have hundreds of megs of textures cached.  A
           single 3D scene can use half a gig of textures.
        \_ A lot of things can use more than 4GB memory. 4GB isn't that
           large anymore. Think of the size of hard drives and media file
           sizes. There is a need for 64-bit engineering tools and so forth.
           Sure it's not "needed", right now, by the vast majority of
           consumers. But it is an enabling technology and you're stupid if
           you can't see why it's "the future". With multitasking, I consider
           1GB my personal minimum on my home machine and I don't do anything
           special.
           \_ Well, it really depends on your apps, but I rarely go over 512MB.
              -!op
        \_ Everyone is talking about memory, but memory is just one
           aspect. Being able to execute 64-bit operations natively is
           a very nice thing if you need to do that sort of thing. Lots
           of scientific and engineering apps do this and performance is
           much better with a 64-bit chip.
           \_ true enough but what about other things? Adding 64 bit
              integers take up much more ALU space and a bit more time
              than adding 32 bits. 64 addressing takes up more space
              for your cache and longer comparator for the TAG and
              other hardwares. 64 bit doesn't come free you know.
              \_ It's a net gain over 32 bit.
        \_ "640K of memory should be enough for anybody"
           \_ But that clown is still the richest man in the world.  What can
              we say.
              \_ Well, wasn't he right? For the time it came out, to succeed
                 it didn't need to support more than that. From a short-term
                 business perspective it was fine. Long-term, it was fixable.
                 DOS was crap in a variety of ways, why focus on that.
        \_ AFAIK, no one supports addressing the entire 64bit memory
           space directly (the memory to store the page table would
           be crazy)
           be crazy). There are other advantages to 64bit addressing
           for ordinary people. Imagine being able to open several 8
           mp photos in ps and then being able to stitch them together
           without having to wait for stuff to load from disk.