kubuntu 32-bit on a 64-bit machine

[Abdullah Ramazanoglu]

jakykong at theanythingbox.com dedi ki:

> As far is i know (doing exactly that -- packages built for 64-bit are too
> limited and the lagrest advantage of 64-bit is that it can handle more
> memory, that's about it as far as i know), there is little or no
> performance issues with 32-bit.

As I've stated earlier, amd64 has more instructions, plus more (x2)
registers and larger (x2) register width. As it is hardware-wise backward
compatible with i386 and up, it will run programs compiled for i386 and
up - but will use only i386 subset of its full architecture. I.e. an app
compiled for i386 will not be able to use half the registers available, do
juggling to handle 64-bit data while half of the 64-bit registers are
unused, and resort to software routines to accomplish some tasks instead
of doing it with a single (new) assembly instruction.

Presuming an optimizing compiler is being used, the same app compiled for
native amd64 will automatically tap into all the extras of amd64
architecture.

Dug a bit of the past discussions I've had over this subject and found
these links:

http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/17/1453239 (Jump
to "Performance" header, just past half way the article)

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1665 (See benchmarks at
page 6,7, and 8)

By the way, welcome! :)
-- 
Abdullah Ramazanoglu
aramazan ÄT myrealbox D0T cöm