Re: Silly question

[Jason Thorpe <thorpej%shagadelic.org@localhost>]

On Sep 6, 2008, at 3:49 PM, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> Vincent <10.50%free.fr@localhost> writes:
> > If true, what are the benefits (and drawbacks) of using AMD64 instead
> > of I386? Increased memory space, but is there any performance  
> > upgrade?

You also get a much faster system call interface.

In general, I've found "64-bit user code is a total win" for almost  
everything.

> It is very application dependent. The AMD64 architecture has more
> registers, and the registers are wider, so for some applications you
> can get significant speedup. On the other hand, you also get wider
> pointers and such, and those consume more cache and memory. You should
> benchmark if you're doing any sort of performance critical application
> to figure out which is better for your app.
>
> --
> Perry E. Metzger                perry%piermont.com@localhost

-- thorpej