On Mon, 2007-10-22 at 12:20 -0400, Jesse Keating wrote:
On Mon, 22 Oct 2007 12:03:05 -0400
Matthew Saltzman <mjs(a)CLEMSON.EDU> wrote:
> 32-bit runtime in general? Why? (Not a critical "why", a genuinely
> curious "why"...)
On those arches, running 64bit code comes at a penalty. In fact, even
on x86_64 there is a penalty. Larger memory overhead. However on
x86_64 the extra CPU registers gained by running in x86_64 mode
outweigh the memory overhead. Not the case on ppc/sparc where there
are no 'extra registers' to gain. Very little software in very few
situations need 64bit.
So on those archs one would want a 64-bit kernel and 32-bit apps, except
for large-memory programs or those needing 64/128-bit numerical types
(self-developed code, for example)?
Is that how it's actually handled by the installer?
--
Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs