64-bit

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Fawzi Mohamed" <fmohamed at mac.com> wrote in message 
news:hbhi5q$1gqm$1 at digitalmars.com...
> On 2009-10-18 20:01:26 +0200, language_fan <foo at bar.com.invalid> said:
>
>> Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:35:53 +0200, Fawzi Mohamed thusly wrote:
>>>
>>> on x86 the 64 bit extension added registers, that makes it faster, even
>>> if as you correctly point out a priori just using 64 bit pointers is
>>> just a drawback unless you have lot of memory.
>>
>> That is very silly claim. First, you need to have use for all those extra
>> registers to obtain any performance benefits. This is nearly not always
>> the case.
> Probably you don't know x86 architecture well, it is register starved for 
> modern standards, also with the 64 bit new instruction were added, on x86 
> the 64 bit change was not "add 64-bit pointers" but it was let's try to 
> fix some major shortcomings of x86.
> These enhancements are available only in 64 bit mode (to keep backward 
> compatibility).
>
> I know for a fact that my code runs faster in 64 bit mode (or you can say 
> my compiler optimizes it better), and I am not the only one: for sure 
> apple converted basically all its applications to 64 bit on snow leopard 
> (that is focusing on speed), so that they are slower :P.
>

I'll certainly agree with you on 64-bit x86 likely being faster than 32-bit, 
but Apple is bad example. Apple, at it's cor...erm..."heart", is a hardware 
company. That's where they make their money. If software runs efficiently, 
then their newer hardware becomes a tougher sell (And Jobs himself has never 
been anything more than a salesman, only with far more control over his 
company than salesmen usually have). It's not surprising that for years, 
every version of iTunes has kept growing noticably more bloated than the 
last, despite having very little extra.