[Gllug] Fileserver hardware advice

[Pete Ryland]

On 20/03/07, t.clarke <tim at seacon.co.uk> wrote:
> >  "so an 8bit CPU would be 4 times faster than a 32bit one...." (paraphrased)
> ....  thats not what I said at all,  merely that a 64bit machine might possibly
> be slower at executing 32bit instructions and in passing at the moment there is
> is no need for me to go up to 64bit!
> Sarcasm is best avoided on the net.

While we're on the topic, does anyone know if there's any extra
overhead involved with context switches between 64- and 32-bit modes?
I certainly remember that was the main problem with 32-bit apps
running on Windows/x86 a while ago since all bios calls and interrupts
ran 16-bit and the context switch was a *killer*, especially for
real-time stuff which I had an interest in at the time.  This was one
of the reasons I moved to Linux, since it didn't have to switch to
16-bit mode at all after booting.

Pete
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