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Re: 64-bit transition deadline (Re: Etch in the hands of the Stable Release Managers)



On Mon, Apr 09, 2007 at 03:48:06PM -0400, Matthias Julius wrote:
> Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com> writes:
> 
> > You mean win64-only games?  Nobody dares to invest in developing that now;
> > it would be suicidal.
> 
> I don't know about the practices of game developers, but, from what I
> see on Linux it should be minimal effort to port a software to 64 bit
> if it is written right.  So, I would expect developers to keep
> 64-safety in mind when writing new code.

Yes, providing a 64-bit version in addition to the 32-bit one is not too
hard if you do things right (they're starting to do that already).  But
if you release the win64 version only, you are screwed :-).  I suppose
Microsoft is going to be the only game vendor who does that (they did it
for Exchange already).

> There seems to be a market for high-end gaming hardware.  I imagine
> there are people willing to pay a premium for 64bit games that produce
> a 10% higher frame rate, too.

Only if they have a working platform to run them on, which for win64 is
not currently present.

> > If a game really needs bigmem, PAE is much more feasible (it is a
> > trap, but that's not a problem for the game vendor ;-)).
> 
> Isn't PAE a performance hog?

Not a terrible one AFAIK.  People are running 32-bit servers with -bigmem hack
already.

> And it still limits the amount of memory
> a process can get.

If they got the design right (which I assume they did), once the application
is PAE-aware the memory limit up to 2^64 depends on the OS implementation.

-- 
Robert Millan

My spam trap is honeypot@aybabtu.com.  Note: this address is only intended
for spam harvesters.  Writing to it will get you added to my black list.



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