Let me accept that. I had always fancied 64 bit processors. 16 billion billion .... Theoretically thats the maximum integer they can handle. How many of us can even imagine a number that big. In fact, the reason why I have 64 bit processor in my lappy is ..... it is 64 bit :-D
But I must say, the world is still not prepared for it yet. And also may be as individuals people like me never really need that kind of processing capability, at least not in near future (I should take a defensive stance here... even god almighty may not predict future of technology considering the mind boggling speed it is advancing at). Anyways, the point which I am trying to make is you may have a 64bit processors but they may still be no better their good old 32bit counterparts. For two reasons :
1. How many applications really need 64bit processing ?
2. Even if they do, do we have a enough softwares around ?
Though I am not a expert in microprocessors and do not how exactly a 64 bit processor functions, but I cannot think of a particular application that is made for a normal PC user and requires really great processing power in terms of word size. What does a normal PC user need ? Word-processors, Spread sheets, Mediaplayers, Internet....I can't think of anything more. Multimedia is probably the only field where we may use 64bit processors to actually enhance performance. I will not include the networking applications here because the available bandwidth is still a more important issue than the processing power of the equipment, in my opinion.
And as a result of this, we still don't see many 64bit applications around. Most of them are probably recompiled versions of the same source code. Because I do not see any significant performance gain in general... In fact, just a few days back I realized that Adobe Flash Player does not have a 64 bit distribution (not at least in GNU/Linux, I don't know about Windows) and they haven't yet given any expected date of its release either. In fact, I haven't seen many Windows 64 bit distributions around. And I daresay, the only reason for having a lot of 64bit GNU/Linux distros is that most of GNU/Linux users happen to be geeks or techo-freaks.
All this makes me wonder whether it makes any sense to put in more and more bits in the wordsize ? Won't it be rather useful to have more cores and more processors. Because we definitely need more parallel-processing power. As I type this, I have at least five applications running on my desktop in addition to all those daemons running in background.
Intel, AMD, Sun.......... I am waiting for quad-core PCs.
Comments, Criticisms are welcome....
P.S.
I cannot think of a good title for this post.... I will appreciate if someone can help me with that
P.P.S.
Day by day,the length of my post has been increasing. May be I have started liking blogging or may be I just love writing about technology :-D
1 comment:
True.
However, the same analogy as bit-capacity applies to Cores as well.
You see the Dual-cores that are around are not yet exploited to their fullest potential, and before Vista, they were basically wasted.
Even the Linux upgrades for them came pretty late.
Same goes for quads.
Having more equipment does not necessarily mean better performance. What it means is that the WAYS & MEANS to perform better are available. However, exploiting them properly is the key.
And as I said before, even Duals have not been pushed to the limit yet. Quads...ideally should come when the time is right for them.
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