[sokukodo]

What exactly is 64 bit vs 32 bit apps?

[brucejy]

Check out

http://www.apple.com/g5processor/

for quick explanation. Basically, it means that the program can take advantage of a lot more memory and do a lot more with every clock cycle. There are a lot of pdf's that you can download from Apple's website that talk about each of these things, including some at the developer section that talk about the different flavors of 64-bit applications.

[sokukodo]

Thanks brucejy, will Tiger be 64 bit? I'm anticipating more RAM purchases.

[MORT A POTTY]

Originally posted by sokukodo:
Thanks brucejy, will Tiger be 64 bit? I'm anticipating more RAM purchases.

no, TIger itself will be 32-bit. it will run 64-bit apps though.

[P]

Originally posted by MORT A POTTY:
no, TIger itself will be 32-bit. it will run 64-bit apps though.

How you can be so certain of that? It certainly won't be 64-bit only, or have the 64-bit optimization finished, but I'm fairly certain that at least some functions will use the 64-bit instructions.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by brucejy:
...and do a lot more with every clock cycle...

That's not entirely accurate. That only applies directly to apps that need integers bigger than 4 billion--which is virtually none of them. The key detail for todays computers is just that it allows more than 4GB of RAM.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by Detrius:
That's not entirely accurate. That only applies directly to apps that need integers bigger than 4 billion--which is virtually none of them. The key detail for todays computers is just that it allows more than 4GB of RAM.

Adding to this, it can actually slow apps down some, since pointers take up twice as much space.

[jamil5454]

Multimedia apps and other high-precision apps will benefit significantly from 64-bit.

[Agent69]

Personally, I don't think that the transition to 64 bit processing will help us that much today but doing so will eventually be needed as RAM and data capacity continues to grow. So why not start now?

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by jamil5454:
Multimedia apps and other high-precision apps will benefit significantly from 64-bit.

Not necessarily. IIRC Motion, for example, does everything in 32 bit fp so it'll work on graphics cards. Photoshop is likely similar. The only thing they'll get from being 64 bit is the ability to use lots of ram, which, I agree, could be significant.

[jamil5454]

http://www.linuxhardware.org/article...mp;mode=thread

This is for the Opteron, but it is 64-bit nonetheless.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by jamil5454:
Multimedia apps and other high-precision apps will benefit significantly from 64-bit.

High precision? That's floating point, not integer. This 64bit refers to ints not floats. With an int, the only precision you are going to get is 1.

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by jamil5454:
http://www.linuxhardware.org/article...mp;mode=thread

This is for the Opteron, but it is 64-bit nonetheless.

Two things to remember about the Opteron (you may know this, I just thought I'd mention it): 1) its major advances in speed were mostly due to its new memory system, not the change to 64 bit, and 2) it enables some additional features in 64 bit mode (because it doesn't have to worry about backwards compatibility), while most other processors (like the G5) are basically identical in 64 bit mode and 32 bit mode.

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by MORT A POTTY:
no, TIger itself will be 32-bit. it will run 64-bit apps though.

Numerous parts of the system run in 64 bit mode, but the focus of Apple is to enable apps which consume big amounts of RAM.