[BLOG] Get your 32bit thinking out of my 64bit life.
Since I'm now over the 100 posts mark and can blog on Icrontic, I thought I would share todays life experience.
In a conversation with a guy, who thinks he knows everything about computers, he starting going off about how even on a 64bit OS you don't need more then 2 GB of RAM. Among his justifications was three points that he has used 64bit OS (ie 64bit XP), that "even on a 64bit OS you'll never use more then 5GB of ram" and his so called experience of looking for a new computer and finding new systems only have 2GB of RAM.
Which is where I wanted to come in and say "Get your 32bit thinking out of my 64bit life." but he was so stuck on his outdated opinion he wouldn't listen to why he is wrong and only has half the facts.
So why is he wrong and only has half the facts; First, his experience with 64bit OS is only with 32bit programs. There is performance benefits to running 32bit programs in a 64bit OS but the real power of a 64bit OS is when you combine it with a 64bit Program. with both the OS and the software in 64bit you gain access to more ram for the programs and not just the OS.
Second, With 32bit programs on a 64bit OS you are still limited to the 32bit RAM cap for the program. More Ram will only reduce some of the paging file use and allow for better multi tasking (there is still a write to the paging file but no read when you have sufficient RAM) Hence with 32bit programs on a 64bit OS you are not going to need more then 5GBs unless your heavy into multi-tasking. let's add it up 3GB/per 32bit program at max usage(some programs will only access 1.5GB of ram due to program limitations), 1GB for shared video (unless you have a great graphics card that doesn't need shared video) and 2GB for your OS and paging file (oh wait that's 6GB I guess he was a little off mark, and you would need 9GB if you were to use two 32bit Programs to the max) Still your not getting a true 64bit experience. so I repeat "Get your 32bit thinking out of my 64bit life."
Last is his argument that new computers only come with 2GB of RAM....Where are you looking!!! HP, Dell, Acer, Asus, etc all sell new stock systems with 6GB or more. Apple and Laptops are the only ones I see still pushing 2GB of RAM, and that's changing very quickly. Memory is cheap and a 64bitOS with 64bit programs are chewing through RAM faster then ever (remember when the switch to 32bit from 16bit, happened and people thought 4MB of RAM was astronomical? I do it was only about 15years ago, and now we have systems stock on the shelf with 9Gb of RAM I think few people ever thought that we would be here so soon)
Thinking on that, if about 15 years ago people were using 4mb of ram and we now have stock 64bit systems with 4GB-9GB of ram in another 15years, or sooner, we'll be making the switch to 128bit OS and starting with 4-9TB of RAM... I expect we'll see mainstream 128bit processors and os's pop up in 3-5 years at the earliest. I digress.
Back to the point, thinking about 64bitOS under the technology umbrella of 32bit software leads to bad decisions in the fast growing 64bit world. Get your 32bit thinking out of my 64bit life, Think 64bit, plan for 64bit, dream of 64bit; and remember the lessons learned in this transition for when 128bit comes.
on a different note, don't forget massively parallel computing is coming to workstations and home computers. Multi threading and parallel computing are happening and will delay 128bit until we max out Multi threading and parallel computing technology. so before you go on about your single core processor, I say it now "Get your single core, single thread, serial processing thinking out of my Multi-core, Multi-thread, parallel computing life.
In a conversation with a guy, who thinks he knows everything about computers, he starting going off about how even on a 64bit OS you don't need more then 2 GB of RAM. Among his justifications was three points that he has used 64bit OS (ie 64bit XP), that "even on a 64bit OS you'll never use more then 5GB of ram" and his so called experience of looking for a new computer and finding new systems only have 2GB of RAM.
Which is where I wanted to come in and say "Get your 32bit thinking out of my 64bit life." but he was so stuck on his outdated opinion he wouldn't listen to why he is wrong and only has half the facts.
So why is he wrong and only has half the facts; First, his experience with 64bit OS is only with 32bit programs. There is performance benefits to running 32bit programs in a 64bit OS but the real power of a 64bit OS is when you combine it with a 64bit Program. with both the OS and the software in 64bit you gain access to more ram for the programs and not just the OS.
Second, With 32bit programs on a 64bit OS you are still limited to the 32bit RAM cap for the program. More Ram will only reduce some of the paging file use and allow for better multi tasking (there is still a write to the paging file but no read when you have sufficient RAM) Hence with 32bit programs on a 64bit OS you are not going to need more then 5GBs unless your heavy into multi-tasking. let's add it up 3GB/per 32bit program at max usage(some programs will only access 1.5GB of ram due to program limitations), 1GB for shared video (unless you have a great graphics card that doesn't need shared video) and 2GB for your OS and paging file (oh wait that's 6GB I guess he was a little off mark, and you would need 9GB if you were to use two 32bit Programs to the max) Still your not getting a true 64bit experience. so I repeat "Get your 32bit thinking out of my 64bit life."
Last is his argument that new computers only come with 2GB of RAM....Where are you looking!!! HP, Dell, Acer, Asus, etc all sell new stock systems with 6GB or more. Apple and Laptops are the only ones I see still pushing 2GB of RAM, and that's changing very quickly. Memory is cheap and a 64bitOS with 64bit programs are chewing through RAM faster then ever (remember when the switch to 32bit from 16bit, happened and people thought 4MB of RAM was astronomical? I do it was only about 15years ago, and now we have systems stock on the shelf with 9Gb of RAM I think few people ever thought that we would be here so soon)
Thinking on that, if about 15 years ago people were using 4mb of ram and we now have stock 64bit systems with 4GB-9GB of ram in another 15years, or sooner, we'll be making the switch to 128bit OS and starting with 4-9TB of RAM... I expect we'll see mainstream 128bit processors and os's pop up in 3-5 years at the earliest. I digress.
Back to the point, thinking about 64bitOS under the technology umbrella of 32bit software leads to bad decisions in the fast growing 64bit world. Get your 32bit thinking out of my 64bit life, Think 64bit, plan for 64bit, dream of 64bit; and remember the lessons learned in this transition for when 128bit comes.
on a different note, don't forget massively parallel computing is coming to workstations and home computers. Multi threading and parallel computing are happening and will delay 128bit until we max out Multi threading and parallel computing technology. so before you go on about your single core processor, I say it now "Get your single core, single thread, serial processing thinking out of my Multi-core, Multi-thread, parallel computing life.
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Comments
If you have ever done video trans coding the old way, download that tool, and hold onto your potatoes because its mind blowingly fast. What used to take an hour or more now takes a few minutes. I converted a 1 GB mpeg 2 file to shrink it down to .wmv for sharing online. Got it down to about a 150 mb .wmv faster than I could grab a cup of Joe.
I'll have to try it out, your experiance shows the the advantages of using a GPU for additional processing and computing at the very least. Thanks for sharing.