Question about Sun boxes/64bit in general

[SocrPlyr]

Alright, I am running billions of iterations for some simulations I am doing.
The i would estimate the calcs include about 20 sqrts, 10 sins/cos, 30 ^2s and uncountable +/-s per iteration.
Most of the stuff uses doubles of course when i am writing this on my p4.
Now if i transfer this code over to a 64bit Sun box and compile it will doubles be 64bit? (or will they be higher?)

The reason i ask is because since the sun box is 64 bit that might give a big speed boost. That plus it is running solaris instead of windows xp so less background stuff will be there. The processors are only 500MHz where as the P4s are around 3GHz, but there is also the difference in compilers VS .NET 2003 vs whatever the default is on the Sun boxes (sorry i really don't use solaris that often)

I am just curious what you guys think about it and i would be greatful if you could answer the question about what it really means to be a double...

Just also curious what you guys think will be faster. I am going to run some code tomorrow to find out, (but i have to write soemthing a little shorter so it doesn't take 50hrs to run)

Thanks,
Josh

 

[ViRGE]

Doubles and other floats do not change between x86-32 and x86-64, so it shouldn't make any difference if it's an x86 box. As for if it's a SPARC box, then that changes things immensely, and you may want to run the app on the Sun box just to see what you get, though I expect your P4 will still be faster.