[Gllug] Which architecture?

[Karanbir Singh]

Peter Corlett wrote:
> On Tue, May 05, 2009 at 10:00:02AM +0100, Karanbir Singh wrote:
> [...]
>> Why would anyone want to run a 64bit firefox anyway ? its almost like
>> running a 64bit email client!! whats the point :)
> 
> x86-64 doesn't just give you access to more memory through longer pointers.
> It gives you more registers, meaning less spilling over to the stack. This
> makes it faster even for small programs.

'faster' - by how much ? is it a case of shaving a llama ? eg.
Thunderbird.x86_64 right now ( on the desktop ):
PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND

4390 kbsingh   15   0 1379m 606m  27m S    0  7.6   4:24.53
thunderbird-bin

And on i386 ( on the laptop ):
PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND 

15699 kbsingh   15   0  628m 108m  21m S    0  1.4   0:03.15 
thunderbird-bin

They both have about the same uptime ( about 18 days, since the last 
kernel update ).

> In any case, web browsers are no longer small programs. Firefox is currently
> using 1.07GB of address space on this machine. (It's using 151MB of actual
> RAM.)

yeah :/

I've been struggling with 1 Gb of ram on my laptop, and its old enough 
that it needs original ddr (ddr1 ?) type ram, which isnt that cheap anymore.

jedit + ffox + tbird and its tight. have now stopped running tomboy 
completely on there!

-- 
Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/  : 2522219 at icq

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