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A 32-bit browser runs just fine on all of the 64-bit OSs I know of. On all of the OSs I have experience with, compiling an app as 64-bit is the exception, done
by dmm 15y ago
A 32-bit browser runs just fine on all of the 64-bit OSs I know of. On all of the OSs I have experience with, compiling an app as 64-bit is the exception, done only when it needs lots of memory.
What advantages does running a 64-bit browser on a 64-bit OS have over running a 32-bit browser on a 64-bit OS?
Do the 8 extra GPRs bring significant performance benefits?
Do individual browser processes need to address lots of memory?
- stingraycharles 15y agoMore memory capacity is just one of the use cases. Just to name one example, when doing string comparisons, you can use long integer comparisons under the hood. When using 8 byte longs instead of 4 byte longs, string comparisons are faster.
- dmm 15y ago> you can use long integer comparisons under the hood That's interesting. Does it make up for the increased size of pointers? Caches are under a lot of pressure these days. AMD64 is a weird arch. Is it possible to use 64bit instructions with a 32bit address space?
- mjg59 15y agoYes, but it's ABI incompatible with 32-bit or full 64-bit. https://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/ https://sites.google.com/site/x32abi/ is an implementation.
- mjb 15y ago> Caches are under a lot of pressure these days. More from data sizes than code sizes, at least in most performance-critical applications. Sure, bigger pointers will lead to higher miss rates in caches that contain code, but that is unlikely to prove to be a bottleneck for real-world browser use (in the current version of the real world).