On Sun, 2008-12-07 at 23:06 -0700, Kenneth Burgener wrote: > Assumptions: > > 1. 4GB Memory. > 2. Overhead. > 3. Compatibility. > 4. Desktop vs Servers. > Is my logic sound? Number 1 is a bit off. But just a bit. Number 2 is solid. Number 3 is... mostly irrelevant with CentOS. Number 4 is not specific enough. First, The 4GB limit. Yes, 64-bit allows the OS access to more than 4GB of *physical* memory. However, it *also* allows (64-bit) processes to access more than 4GB of *virtual* memory. This can be invaluable in applications that process a lot of data. Second, compatibility. Upstream's use of multilib allows 32-bit applications to be run on a 64-bit system without much trouble. Plugins, specifically Firefox plugins, have the better part of a solution in the form of nspluginwrapper. Drivers not much can be done about; fortunately there aren't too many of those. Third, desktop versus server. Let's ignore the 4GB limit discussed above while we examine this one. For PPC versus PPC64 your argument is valid. For IA-32 versus X86-64, you need to look at what the desktop will be used for. One of the benefits X86-64 gives you over IA-32 is more registers within the CPU. Operations involving registers are *much* faster than operations involving memory, allowing X86-64 apps to be up to about 15% faster than IA-32 in mathematical, scientific, or multimedia applications. -- Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazqueznet@xxxxxxxxx> PLEASE don't CC me; I'm already subscribed
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