On 09/07/2020 09:28 AM, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 07, 2020 at 05:22:20PM +0300, Georgi Naplatanov wrote:
>> You'll be able to use more RAM, CPU's registers. On the other hand some
>> software vendors do not support x86 anymore - example: Google Chrome
>
> Expanding on this a little bit: the 64 bit architecture has more CPU
> registers which could greatly improve performance for some tasks. I
> think that there are certain other CPU instructions that are not
> available in 32 bit mode that your programs could take advantage of.
>
> Not only can you use more RAM (you can address >4GiB with 64 bit memory
> addresses without requiring workarounds like PAE), but you will almost
> certainly *use* more RAM too, since all native pointers are now twice
> the size. And, since most of them will be pointing at addresses lower
> than the 4GiB boundary, half of all the newly consumed RAM will be
> zeroes.
>
Answers I'm seem focused on too low levels. I'm interested in the
end-user experience.
E.G. what end user observable difference would there be between 32 bit
based browser and a 64 bit based browser?