Re: 64 bit F7

["Alan M. Evans" <fedoralist alanevans org>]

On Tue, 2007-07-17 at 14:21 -0700, Kam Leo wrote:
> Aside from the Microsoft's technical and licensing hurdles that does
> not explain why many companies with those IP rights have not ported to
> the newest platform. (BTW, many also did not bother to port to Windows
> XP-64.) Is it because the 64-bit market is too small to be worth the
> effort? If the 64-bit world is so great why has Intel released a whole
> bunch of new multi-core 32-bit only processors for the consumer
> market. Is it possible that users aren't getting much benefit from
> using applications converted to 64-bits?
> 
> As they say: "Where is the killer app for 64-bit computing?"

Depends on who the "user" is, and what a "killer app" is to that user.

Most things that consumers need don't approach requiring (or seriously
benefitting from) 64 bits. But some servers and workstations can get a
lot from the wider data path and bigger address space.

I would guess that very few home users require more than 4G of RAM, but
it helps a lot around here where I work. Almost every new workstation we
get is 64 bit arch.