Why is 64bit switch taking so long?

[Cogman]

Just wondering, compaired to the switches from 8 - 16 - 32bit it seems like the switch to 64 bit is taking much longer. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Dos 8 - 16bit, win 1.0 -> 3.11 16bit - win95+ 32bit. Is it just because everyone is set in their ways? Or is it the lack of major improvments from 32 - 64 that are holding us back?

Really, Microsoft could have just made vista 64 bit only and made everyone else conform (you know it would happen)

 

[Nothinman]

The real question is why does it matter? Just about everyone who has a real need for a 64-bit system is already using one and has been for a decade. Sure there are some things that are/were waiting on MS to release a 64-bit version like Exchange and MS SQL but nothing was stopping them from releasing it for IA64 or Alpha (if MS had decided to support Alpha past Win2K RC2) so the demand can't be all that high.

Sure some consumer level things like games will be happy to have 64-bits of VM available but most apps never even come close to hitting the 32-bit 2G (or 3G depending on your setup) VM ceiling. The need for a 64-bit VM is extremely small niche and will remain that way for a while even once 64-bit systems become the norm.

And MS only releasing a 64-bit port of Vista would be insanely stupid because everyone wouldn't conform and the benefits are debatable. People are already calling Vista a questionable upgrade so imagine how poor adoption would be if the forced hardware replacement/upgrade that people already complain about actually existed.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Cogman
Just wondering, compaired to the switches from 8 - 16 - 32bit it seems like the switch to 64 bit is taking much longer

I guess you don't remember how long standard mode and enhanced mode lingered around up to Windows 3.1 🙂

64bit adoption is growing much faster now, the Vista release is dring a lot of that. And (with apologies to Nothinman) there are plenty of applications which can take advantage of it today. For the consumer, the current reason for the switch will be gaming (when games like Supreme Commander are clearly memory limited on 32bit systems, it's just the tip of the iceberg)

Bill

 

[Aberforth]

A lot of people are switching to 64bit windows because there are less chances of any compatibility issues with the new hardware- you can easily get 64bit drivers if your hardware is like 2 years old. Also the next version of Winodws is going to 64bit only so people using 32bit versions of Vista won't be able to updrade to the upcoming 64bit Windows. Therefore I recommend power users to switch to 64bit version of Windows as soon as possible.

 

[Stumps]

WTF??? it took almost 10 years before the mainstream market switched from 16-bit to 32-bit.

the 386 was released in 1985 and had full 32-bit support, but it wasn't until 1995 that a non-workstation 32-bit OS (Windows 95) was released....and even then it wasn't fully 32-bit, it still relied on the 16-bit DOS.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Cogman
Really, Microsoft could have just made vista 64 bit only and made everyone else conform (you know it would happen)

Limiting Vista to 64-bit only would have drastically slowed down its adoption. I, for instance, have about ten PCs in my office and NONE have 64-bit processors. I plan on putting Vista on several of them, but if Vista was 64-bit only, it'd be years before I replaced most of my hardware.

In the end, Vista has a lot of advantages over XP, but most of those advantages are NOT related to any 64-bit options.

 

[Mem]

I believe Microsoft's next OS Vienna is going to be 64 bit only,so be interesting to see how well Vista x64 does in the meantime.

 

[Nothinman]

And (with apologies to Nothinman) there are plenty of applications which can take advantage of it today.

Care to name a few that your average consumer would ever use?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

And (with apologies to Nothinman) there are plenty of applications which can take advantage of it today.

Care to name a few that your average consumer would ever use?

7-zip has a 64-bit build that is slightly faster than the 32-bit build.... but that is all I can think of and it really does not show unless you are compressing / decompressing 500mb files a good deal.

 

[Nothinman]

7-zip has a 64-bit build that is slightly faster than the 32-bit build.... but that is all I can think of and it really does not show unless you are compressing / decompressing 500mb files a good deal.

And it's likely only faster because of the different code generated by the compiler and/or the extra GPRs and other ISA changes AMD made but not because of anything to do with the fact that it's 64-bit.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

7-zip has a 64-bit build that is slightly faster than the 32-bit build.... but that is all I can think of and it really does not show unless you are compressing / decompressing 500mb files a good deal.

And it's likely only faster because of the different code generated by the compiler and/or the extra GPRs and other ISA changes AMD made but not because of anything to do with the fact that it's 64-bit.

Exactly.

I thought we settled that like 3 years ago when the Athlon 64 was new and everyone was asking, "Why is 64-bit better?"

In case anyone forgot, the fact that the GPR's are 64-bits wide instead of 32-bits wide only benefits an extremely small portion of the x86 market. It's the other architectural changes that are part of the x86-64 ISA which give the current 64-bit x86 processors an advantage over 32-bit x86 processors.

And if anyone REALLY wants to know specifics about x86-64 and why it's an improvement, look at this series of articles by ArsTechnica.com. It is by far the best explanation of what's different and why it matters that I've read since the Athlon 64 was released.

That said, the OP's question is valid. Why is it taking so long? The extra GPR's used when running x86-64 code should improve performance regardless of whether you need the increased dynamic range of a 64-bit processor or the larger physical memory address space of x86-64 processors.

I've been able to come up with two answers. The cost of switching development to a 64-bit environment isn't worth the benefits, and people are lazy - they just don't want to change.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

And (with apologies to Nothinman) there are plenty of applications which can take advantage of it today.

Care to name a few that your average consumer would ever use?

I think you missed my point, but re-reading it it's unclear. Probably should have said 'could take' instead of 'can take'. My point is, even on the gaming front, we are running into limits on the 32bit architecture (my example was SC and memory issues).

 

[Nothinman]

I think you missed my point, but re-reading it it's unclear. Probably should have said 'could take' instead of 'can take'. My point is, even on the gaming front, we are running into limits on the 32bit architecture (my example was SC and memory issues).

But gaming is just about the only consumer level software that's hitting those limits, I even mentioned them in my first post because I know about the issues with SupCom.

 

[mechBgon]

Whether any of my apps themselves are 64-bit or 32-bit, I don't really care, the option to have gobs of RAM so I can run lots of apps without hitting the pagefile is attractive in its own right. I was running my 32-bit WinXP Pro out of 2GB of RAM at my last job fairly regularly. It didn't require any exotic apps, just multitasking with normal consumer-level apps.

The next step up would've been to add another 2GB of RAM to the remaining pair of memory slots, leaving me with maybe 3.25GB useable under 32-bit Windows. Better than nothing, I suppose...

 

[Nothinman]

Whether any of my apps themselves are 64-bit or 32-bit, I don't really care, the option to have gobs of RAM so I can run lots of apps without hitting the pagefile is attractive in its own right.

And that's also an option with a 32-bit system. Sure it requires PAE which has artificial limitations placed on it in the 32-bit client versions of Windows but that's not the fault of the architecture.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Whether any of my apps themselves are 64-bit or 32-bit, I don't really care, the option to have gobs of RAM so I can run lots of apps without hitting the pagefile is attractive in its own right.

And that's also an option with a 32-bit system. Sure it requires PAE which has artificial limitations placed on it in the 32-bit client versions of Windows but that's not the fault of the architecture.

Why bother with PAE when a 64-bit processor handles it natively and x86-64 brings more benefits over the 32-bit x86 ISA?

 

[Nothinman]

Why bother with PAE when a 64-bit processor handles it natively and x86-64 brings more benefits over the 32-bit x86 ISA?

Because it's already there and is a much simpler migration. One can install the memory and being using it immediately as long as the hardware support is there (assuming they have an OS that will let them use it) whereas converting to a 64-bit system requires a full reinstallation.

Obviously if you really need to use a large amount of memory then a 64-bit system would be the ideal solution but it's not always feasible. And in the Windows world the majority of your apps by a huge margin will still be 32-bit so each instance will still be limited to 2G of VM, well or 4G if you cross your fingers and mark the binary large address aware.

 

[drag]

In Linux I suppose you can just swap out the 32bit kernel for a 64bit one and get the benifits of being able to allocate the full 32bit address range to this or that application.

Windows it's much more difficult, of course. Mostly because the assumptions that application designers made about your computer I guess.

This is the trouble with propriatory software. It's very fragile.. change out any element of your computer system and it all goes to crap. Change the cpu type your sunk. Change the OS, your sunk. Change any of the dependancies for even slightly incompatable versions, your sunk. It's very rigid.

It's not like it's just Windows. Propriatory software for Linux suffers the same fate as propriatory software for Windows. Linux kernel and most of the typical software you find in a distribution had AMD64-native software aviable at the time of x86-64bit software release (with some notable exceptions like O😵rg). This is mostly due to the fact that Linux and the majority had been aviable on 64bit-native platforms like Alpha and Sparc for a long time (compared to Windows were it's Alpha support was 32bit-only) and to the fact that AMD was working with Suse (and probably Redhat) to make sure that it had a OS for the cpu at the time of it's release.

So it's been about 4 years since then. STILL there is no 64bit native version of Flash from Adobe for Linux. If Adobe was to do something like release Flash as open source I can pretty much garrentee that it will have at least beta versions for 64bit-native in about a week.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Why bother with PAE when a 64-bit processor handles it natively and x86-64 brings more benefits over the 32-bit x86 ISA?

Because it's already there and is a much simpler migration. One can install the memory and being using it immediately as long as the hardware support is there (assuming they have an OS that will let them use it) whereas converting to a 64-bit system requires a full reinstallation.

Obviously if you really need to use a large amount of memory then a 64-bit system would be the ideal solution but it's not always feasible. And in the Windows world the majority of your apps by a huge margin will still be 32-bit so each instance will still be limited to 2G of VM, well or 4G if you cross your fingers and mark the binary large address aware.

PAE doesn't do anything but allow more physical memory to be addressed. Right? x86-64 is not JUST about a larger physical address space.

Calling PAE an alternative to switching to x86-64 is like telling someone who wants a truck for daily driving and the ability to pull a trailer every now and then that a Civic will get them around town just fine and ignoring the ability to tow anything.

 

[Nothinman]

PAE doesn't do anything but allow more physical memory to be addressed. Right?

Yes and that's exactly what he said he wanted to do in the post to which I replied.

x86-64 is not JUST about a larger physical address space.

And? The thread is about 32-bit vs 64-bit which is completely seperate from the architecture. If IA64 didn't suck so bad, Alpha was still alive or Windows supported sparc64 they'd all be valid alternatives for 64-bit Windows as well.

 

[Smilin]

There is no killer app.

Specialized workstations like CAD, Photo/video editing that need the large memory support are already running on 64 bit typically.

For consumers no killer app has been released that needs it. The most stressful thing on consumer boxes is games. Top end games are using like 2GB.

When things really start needing 4GB adoption will be nearly instant - everything is already in place.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Cogman
Really, Microsoft could have just made vista 64 bit only and made everyone else conform (you know it would happen)

Yes, MS wants that kind of backlash :roll: Why would they want to anyway? What is the current need for everyone to be 64bit?

 

[Jeff7181]

The OP mentioned making Vista 64-bit only. The only 64-bit technology that would be possible with is x86-64 because as you said, the alternative 64-bit architectures aren't viable. So it isn't really about the width of the registers... it's about "x86-32" or x86-64 because those are the only two options on the market.

 

[Nothinman]

The OP mentioned making Vista 64-bit only. The only 64-bit technology that would be possible with is x86-64 because as you said, the alternative 64-bit architectures aren't viable. So it isn't really about the width of the registers... it's about "x86-32" or x86-64 because those are the only two options on the market.

And my reply about PAE wasn't directed at the OP but at mechBgon, I even quoted his post in mine as usual so that it's difficult to confuse who and what the comment is about.

And width of registers has nothing to do with 32-bit vs 64-bit or x86 vs AMD64 either, SSE registers have been something like 96-bit or 128-bit for quite some time so if you really needed them you could use them without producing a 64-bit binary.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

The OP mentioned making Vista 64-bit only. The only 64-bit technology that would be possible with is x86-64 because as you said, the alternative 64-bit architectures aren't viable. So it isn't really about the width of the registers... it's about "x86-32" or x86-64 because those are the only two options on the market.

And my reply about PAE wasn't directed at the OP but at mechBgon, I even quoted his post in mine as usual so that it's difficult to confuse who and what the comment is about.

And width of registers has nothing to do with 32-bit vs 64-bit or x86 vs AMD64 either, SSE registers have been something like 96-bit or 128-bit for quite some time so if you really needed them you could use them without producing a 64-bit binary.

Yep, 128I'm pretty sure, although I haven't kept up with the latest Core 2 architecture, maybe Intel added more. There's also a lot more SSE registers than there are GPR's. But again, you're speaking in general terms. x86 CPU's are what we're talking about here, and there's only two types worth talking about. The 32-bit ISA and the 64-bit ISA. AMD chose to develop a 64-bit processor rather than extend the 32-bit ISA with PAE and adding more GPR's. Unless we're in the Highly Technical forum discussing all those other architectures, I think it's safe to assume that anyone who's talking 32-bit vs. 64-bit is talking about the specific x86-64 ISA... not a 64-bit processor in the most general terms possible.

So when someone asks, "why 64-bit?" They're asking, "Why an AMD64 or EMT64 processor with a 64-bit version of Windows rather than a 32-bit version of Windows?"

If the increased physical address space was the ONLY reason "64-bit" mattered, sure, PAE would be reasonable solution. But it's not the only reason. The fact that the A64 and Core 2's are 64-bit processors means little compared to the other features those processors that happen to be 64-bit have. I don't know for sure, but I suspect AMD figured if they're going to modify the ISA, why not lay the foundation for the future. Maybe some day we will be working with applications that benefit from the enormous dynamic range of a 64-bit processor. It'll suck not to have that when you need it, but what harm does it do to have it and not need it?

So that's my point... it's not a processor's "64-bitness" that matters, it's the features of the x86-64 ISA that matter, and if developers would start taking advantage of them there would be a reason to move to 64-bit. But they're not... so here we are, not much worse of running a 32-bit version of Windows than we are running a 64-bit version, and sometimes better.