Sun (now Oracle) has shipped 64-bit Java for a while now, most new Macs and Windows PCs are 64-bit (including both 32-bit and 64-bit variants of Safari and IE, respectively), the latest Windows Server is exclusively 64-bit, Google releases a 64-bit version of Chrome for 64-bit Linux, Mozilla has been releasing 64-bit nightly builds for a while already...

...and now Adobe has gotten into the game with a preview of a 64-bit version of Flash for those of you who prefer the performance of 64-bit browsers and still want to watch YouTube: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

[Edited on September 17, 2010 at 3:25 PM. Reason : sixty-FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUR

9/17/2010 3:23:59 PM

omg the future really IS now!

9/17/2010 3:28:23 PM

A couple of years ago, I was standing in line at the Lenovo warehouse sale, right? And this dude was talking about 64-bit processors to this other dude in line.

The other dude was all, "So what does my computer have right now?"

And dude was like, "Well, you probably have a 32-bit processor."

Other dude says, "Huh. Well...I'm not paying more for 64-bit, 'cause you know there'll just be the next big thing, 72 bits or something."

And I thought, really? You think we're gonna need to address more than 16 EB of memory any time soon?

9/17/2010 3:38:59 PM

i have 2 cores so its reall y128bit.

9/17/2010 3:40:50 PM

asdhkglk;gjagjropg

9/17/2010 3:44:00 PM

I have 4 cores so you can suck on these 256-bit nuts

9/17/2010 3:45:11 PM

wow. cloud computing must be, like, millions of bits!

9/17/2010 3:45:50 PM

kind of makes you think

9/17/2010 3:46:11 PM

Quote :

"And I thought, really? You think we're gonna need to address more than 16 EB of memory any time soon?"

This is where I go "back when I was a youngin' who thought we'd ever need more than 2MB of memory?"

Then I just start to feel old.

9/17/2010 4:07:31 PM

i always wanted more ram because my 386 could barely run doom at 4mb

9/17/2010 4:08:29 PM

We made do with 32-bit processors for over 40 years before we ran up on the addressing limit on the consumer level. I'm sure we'll run up on it again with 64-bit processors, but we are talking orders and orders of magnitude here.

9/17/2010 4:11:59 PM

Quote :

"i always wanted more ram because my 386 could barely run doom at 4mb"

This reminded me of the turbo button on my 386.

9/17/2010 4:12:49 PM

more like

Quote :

"64-bit is the marketing wave of the future "

Because the only inherent improvement in 64bit is addressable space. It takes a shit ton of work and a pretty specialized application to actually be FASTER in a 64bit environment than a 32bit one.

When you up the addressable space, you also up the management needs, and the bandwidth needed to push that space.

The wave of the future is ARM and other dedicated silicon (GPUs, physics engines, video engines) to offload CPU's for general purpose multitasking. Hell even Intel is going down this path with the i3/5/7 series. 64bit is pretty irrelevent to non-specialty markets still.

9/17/2010 4:14:21 PM

FroshKiller, 32-bit processors didn't even exist for 40 years

I'm thinking you meant 12 years, the time between the mainstreaming of 32-bit with Windows 95 and the advent of consumer 32-bit PCs with maxed-out RAM along with the emergence of consumer-oriented 64-bit versions of Vista and Tiger

9/17/2010 4:21:49 PM

lewisje, are you for real a troll or do you just not know what you're talking about?

[Edited on September 17, 2010 at 4:33 PM. Reason : THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE IS THE CHEAP ASIC]

9/17/2010 4:27:01 PM

i mean you can do everything twice as fast right?

9/17/2010 4:34:53 PM

Quote :

"FroshKiller, 32-bit processors didn't even exist for 40 years I'm thinking you meant 12 years, the time between the mainstreaming of 32-bit with Windows 95 and the advent of consumer 32-bit PCs with maxed-out RAM along with the emergence of consumer-oriented 64-bit versions of Vista and Tiger"

Frosh is a hella lot closer to the mark than you are.

The first 32bit processor was the Motorola 68000, famously used by the Lisa and the Macintosh. Introduced in 1979 (31 years ago).

9/17/2010 7:52:58 PM

so the 64/60 bit processors came before the 32 bit?

9/17/2010 7:56:41 PM

but without 64bit, I gotta page

9/17/2010 8:21:36 PM

^^^^no but it does mean that you can address more RAM and don't need as many operations to deal with ginormous numbers

^^^The 68k had only a 16-bit data bus; anyway I also know that Bell Labs put out a fully 32-bit CPU in 1980 and Intel put out an unsuccessful one in 1981 and a successful one (80386, or "i386") in 1985, but 32-bit operating systems, capable of running 32-bit applications, did not become mainstream until 1995. Similarly AMD came out with the first x86-64 (or AMD64) processor in 2003, Intel released its Itanium in 2001, and earlier vendors had released 64-bit processors for more specialized applications, and there were even 64-bit consumer operating systems before 2007, like two different 64-bit versions of XP Pro (Itanium and x64), but it wasn't until about 2007 that 64-bit gained a serious foothold in the consumer marketplace.

BTW I am not a troll

9/17/2010 8:40:52 PM

^and very, VERY few mainstream applications have any need to handle "ginormous" numbers. And addressing more ram comes with overhead. Which, in mainstream spaces, has zero or negative impact on overall system performance.

Good job reading wikipedia. The 68k was the first 32bit architecture in a CPU. The processor had 32bit registers, making it a 32bit processor.

And I would say that the Macintosh was pretty darn mainstream. Mac OS 7 came out in 1991 and had full 32 bit addressing.

I still have no idea what your point is at all, but regardless it seems pedantic at best.


As someone who watches the trends of computing technology, 64-bit x86 architectures seem to be the last attempt of a dying breed. 64-bit doesn't solve any of the problems core to the x86 and it introduces a whole host of complexity in memory management and mapping.

The wave of the future is in coordinated specialized silicon. Maybe x86 will have a part in it, but at this point I don't see it.

9/17/2010 9:11:54 PM

^^lol that was intended as sarcasm.

[Edited on September 17, 2010 at 9:21 PM. Reason : D]

9/17/2010 9:20:11 PM

^^I agree x86-64 has its share of problems, I remember Douglas Crockford spelled them out once, at least for the x86-32 architecture (which x64 is backwards-compatible with)
Also when System 7 came out the Mac was a dying breed, saved only by the second coming of thy Lord and Saviour, Steve Jobs

9/17/2010 9:29:11 PM

64 bit for A/V operations is the heat. Adobe lets you use it as a video cache, which gives me around 50-60% faster rendering; along with my processor now stays pegged with plenty of data instead of around 80% waiting on disk.

Same goes for audio processing. In ImToo converters you can pick up 40-50% just by getting their 64-bit client.

Drivers, however, are a COMPLETELY different story

9/17/2010 10:54:24 PM

I noticed I've used 64-bit ITT about as often as "little creepy" is used in this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXMeZwO2qZ0

9/18/2010 12:06:09 AM

Quote :

"The first 32bit processor was the Motorola 68000"

Didn't some of the IBM S/360's from the mid/late 60's have 32-bit registers?

I guess it depends on how pedantic you want to be with the term "processor".

9/18/2010 12:11:35 AM

I specifically had the System/360 in mind when I made that post.

9/18/2010 12:24:15 AM

i iz a dumdum hed nao

9/18/2010 1:01:00 AM

I thought Windows 3.1 had an enhanced mode which made it 32bit?

9/18/2010 2:43:02 PM

close: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32s
and it also allowed 32-bit disk access
and also Windows NT was fully 32-bit from the beginning, even NT 3.1, which looked like Windows 3.1

[Edited on September 18, 2010 at 2:53 PM. Reason : but the revolution didn't come to a head until Windows 95

9/18/2010 2:52:26 PM

Quote :

"The wave of the future is ARM and other dedicated silicon (GPUs, physics engines, video engines) to offload CPU's for general purpose multitasking. Hell even Intel is going down this path with the i3/5/7 series. 64bit is pretty irrelevent to non-specialty markets still."

Add chess engines to that list. 64-bit is HUGE is this market.

9/18/2010 3:04:19 PM

Quote :

"As someone who watches the trends of computing technology, 64-bit x86 architectures seem to be the last attempt of a dying breed."

that's the dumbest shit i've heard. all these proprietary risc architectures are the dying breeds. sparc, ppc, itanium. the market has realized standardization is the way of the future because very few people will actually be in the hardware game as network connectivity catches up. dirt cheap x86-64 will be a mainstay for at least 5 to 8 years. people are interested in software as a service so they dont have to staff their own IT department, setup their own shit, etc. commoditizing compute comes with the cost reduction of homogenization. if anything, you might see some architecture plugins for x86 at the hypervisor level. amd is going to try with their whole fuzion line, but until developers start writing things that thread well, adding more and more cores will just be an exercise of moores law rather than pushing any performance limits.

9/18/2010 8:35:22 PM

9/18/2010 10:11:51 PM

drill baby drill

9/18/2010 10:25:14 PM

about fucking time

I still haven't figured out the issue exactly but if my laptop isn't plugged in and I start trying to do anything that has anything to do with flash, typically watching a video, my computer slows down to a halt and nearly becomes unresponsive until it is plugged in

maybe this will fix it?

[Edited on September 19, 2010 at 12:28 PM. Reason : it might just be anything processor intensive when i'm unplugged, i cannot figure out how to fix it]

9/19/2010 12:27:07 PM

^check the obvious stuff, power settings etc.

Also check the bios power settings - some laptops will fall into lower power modes when unplugged (or deactivate a core, etc.)

9/19/2010 2:33:56 PM

Quote :

"that's the dumbest shit i've heard. all these proprietary risc architectures are the dying breeds. sparc, ppc, itanium. the market has realized standardization is the way of the future because very few people will actually be in the hardware game as network connectivity catches up. dirt cheap x86-64 will be a mainstay for at least 5 to 8 years. people are interested in software as a service so they dont have to staff their own IT department, setup their own shit, etc. commoditizing compute comes with the cost reduction of homogenization. if anything, you might see some architecture plugins for x86 at the hypervisor level. amd is going to try with their whole fuzion line, but until developers start writing things that thread well, adding more and more cores will just be an exercise of moores law rather than pushing any performance limits."

Dude you have no idea what you're talking about. The only thing you are correct about is that these proprietary architectures are going away. But the standard ain't the x86.

In every space other than desktop computing, ARM is the new king for one very simple reason: calculations per watt. It absolutely kills x86 in power efficiency, which is the metric of evaluation for future CPUs in mobile, servers and before too long, desktops and laptops.

You're also right that IT is being simplified, and x86 loses there too because it's still carrying decades of legacy along with it.

9/20/2010 4:37:39 AM

I want me some quad-core 4GHz 64-bit ARM chips

so what if they don't support Windows or Wine

9/20/2010 7:56:28 AM

^^you're right, I don't design or run the world's leading private cloud or anything.
you work at the world's most influential software company, you guys supporting the platform in any real capacity? moving any business apps to it? IA64 is far more efficient than x86-64 but you recently dropped support for it. care to post more conjecture based absolutely 0 data center evidence?

9/20/2010 8:30:49 AM

Why would there be any data center evidence for an architecture that is on it's way but has yet to enter that market?

9/20/2010 10:29:07 AM

ARM is nothing new. It's been around well over a decade. This is like a juniper vs cisco debate. You can sit here and tell me that juniper is way better than cisco and the way to go etc etc etc. I might even agree with you from a purely technical stand point. The fact is the cost of entry into the market is ridiculous and on top of that to get your fab up to snuff you need demand to get any kind of tech investment capital this day and age and even then, that may not be enough. Now lets say you've got demand for a lower wattage datacenter. Now you need software to run on it. Redhat, MS, Oracle (sun), and all the other major vendors are busy building stacks around x86 hypervisors to sell you and have no mention of porting ANYTHING, let alone a hypervisor to ARM. I could keep typing but it's pointless. x86 and x86-64 will make up over 75% of datacenter space for the next 5-8 years. the other 25% I can all but guarantee will be mostly legacy RISC (PPC/SPARC) and mainframe stuff for telcos and banks.

9/20/2010 3:33:12 PM

Think about what you're saying here dude.

You're making a circular argument. You're saying that the wave of the future is x86-64 because data centers are designed for x86-64 because the current market is x86-64.

I don't even know what the "worlds leading private cloud" even means. If you aren't Google, Amazon or Microsoft, I don't know that I really give much merit to that as a future total market trend.

You are working in a pull market. That is, your solutions must use whatever the CURRENT standard is.

But, I do think your market is a great illustration of why x86 is a dying platform standard. Because of the architecture, hypervisors and process separation MUST be done at the microprocessor level (isolate all cores and memory and transport control). In an ARM world, this is no longer necessary, which would give datacenters much more density.

There's two problems with ARM/CUDA/CELL today. First is that there is that the industry as a whole hasn't shifted to think in a core-oriented paradigm. Everyone thinks in a microprocessor paradigm (collection of cores + plumbing). Second is that partially as a result of the first problem, the tooling to develop solutions using this metaphor is either poor or non-existent.

The second piece, development tools, are coming FAST. xCode is there. Visual Studio is now putting a toe into the pool with Windows Phone 7. There are tools coming FAST to develop for CUDA that are making HUGE impacts in the technical computing space.

Datacenters for isolated VMs (which is what you're talking about) is a TINY fraction of the cloud marketplace. Technical Computing is MUCH larger in size and revenue and people are solving problems there with CUDA and CELL.

9/20/2010 4:07:11 PM

that's like saying binary based computing is a dying breed and quantum is the future. if anything, x86 just hit a midlife crisis. of course academia and number crunch style grids are going to in a new direction first, they're research based and publicly funded. research based high density datacenters hinging around number crunching and simulations makes up a very small percentage of corporate compute. they certainly make up a large sector of say.. the telco and defense data center space but this is under 1% of the corporate infrastructure. go to a vmug, sysadmin meeting, lug, any kind of IT gathering. the market is just picking up 64bit and SOME kind of virtualization in most cases, to say x86-64 is "dying" is ridiculous, which is the point here.

for reference, the cloud I work on deploys and reclaims ~2000 environments a week across almost all platforms (don't have any itanium hardware yet). it should triple in size by year's end and within a year be open to the (greater) public.

[Edited on September 20, 2010 at 4:29 PM. Reason : just to get an idea that I'm not spouting off uninformed opinions - we all know marketing wins]

9/20/2010 4:27:40 PM

^ You have a very, very skewed perception of market sizes.

"number crunch style grids" are not at all limited to academia or public funding. In fact, the overwhelming use of grid computing (private and public) is for these kinds of systems.

"makes up a very small percentage of corporate compute"
Unless you're in a financial, engineering, digital production, or defense industry. Which, for these industries, this is the overwhelming percentage of corporate compute time. And these aren't small industries.

Quote :

"go to a vmug, sysadmin meeting, lug, any kind of IT gathering."

Um, there's a good reason why these populations aren't representative of the actual market. Business advantage based on compute advantage means they don't talk about how they operate.

Quote :

"for reference, the cloud I work on deploys and reclaims ~2000 environments a week across almost all platforms (don't have any itanium hardware yet). it should triple in size by year's end and within a year be open to the (greater) public."

I can point to ONE single investment bank that has a deployment scale larger than this. If I look at just the financial TC/RTC market, it is exponentially larger than the scale of your company, and it is moving FAST to completely abandon x86 as the compute engine.

Yes, obviously cloud virtualization of client-based services is going to be x86 based for a long time to come. But I don't see it for everyone else. Core-based architectures scale better, are more energy efficient and are cheaper to implement. The hangup is human, not technological.

9/20/2010 6:43:34 PM

what about the 128 bit yo? That's like the tsunami of the future...

9/20/2010 6:54:49 PM

I fail to see a time when anyone alive today will ever need to address more than 16EB, 4.29 billion times the 4GB RAM address space limit for 32-bit computers.

9/20/2010 7:43:53 PM

Quote :

"Um, there's a good reason why these populations aren't representative of the actual market. Business advantage based on compute advantage means they don't talk about how they operate. "

We have a winner.

9/20/2010 7:56:11 PM