[sclug] Comet Quad core offering - cheap high street commoditisation of computers

Alex Butcher lug at assursys.co.uk
Mon Mar 17 18:05:24 UTC 2008


On Mon, 17 Mar 2008, Will Dickson wrote:

> Alex Butcher wrote:
>
>> b) Because very few end-users have the need for processes to grow to be 
>> more
>> than 3GB in size (and very few systems will have more than 3GB RAM anyway).
>
> AIUI 64-bit mode also enables various additional registers and other goodies, 
> so if you're doing number crunching then 64-bit mode should give you better 
> performance even if you don't need lots-o-RAM.

On the other hand, the new instructions are longer, and addresses are longer
too, so you'll need both more memory and more memory bandwidth...

> Will.

Best Regards,
Alex.
-- 
Alex Butcher, Bristol UK.                           PGP/GnuPG ID:0x5010dbff

"[T]he whole point about the reason why I think it is important we go for
identity cards and an identity database today is that identity fraud and
abuse is a major, major problem. Now the civil liberties aspect of it, look
it is a view, I don't personally think it matters very much."
  - Tony Blair, 6 June 2006 <http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page9566.asp>



More information about the Sclug mailing list