Can someone please exaplin to me in lamens terms 64 bit computing on a Mac?
What 64 bit options are there for Mac users (I noticed todat the Mac Pros have dual 64 bit Xeons)? How do Tiger and Leopard differ when it come to 64 bit? What kind of performance difference is there between 32 and 64? Do all application support 64 bit? Will all chips be 64 bit eventually?
Mac Specs: iMac G5 2.1 GHz iSight, 1.5GB RAM & Macbook Air 1.6 GHz with 80 GB HD
64-bit, as opposed to 32-bit in computing, means that that much data can be processed at once by the processor, so that's been double. In order to harness this capability, programs have to take advantage of these larger chunks of data that can be used, so unless a program was written 64-bit from the ground-up, it cannot take advantage of 32-bit.
In Tiger, 64bit is not supported yet. In Leopard, it is, and according to Apple, 32-bit applications and 64-bit applications will run side by side flawlessly.
Many of the benefits in 64-bit coding are that programs become easier to handle and smaller in size, the performance goes up considerably (I don't have numbers) at least by a noticeable level, especially when processing a video, or converting songs in iTunes etc.
64-bit seems to be the new bitsize all chipmakers are aiming for now.
Thanks! So once Leopard is out will there be apps that will run to the max on both? Can developers make universal apps like this or will there have to be two versions of each?
Mac Specs: Mac Pro, 3.2 GHz 8 Core, 8 GB RAM, 2*750 GB Disk, nVidia 8800 GT
The general scuttle however is that device drivers will be trouble. I hope that Leopard does as it advertizes. We will need to be able to use 32 bit drivers for some time to come. Meantime, if an upgrade to Leopard suddenly makes my 64 bit G5 go faster, I am all for that!!
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My Macs: Mac Pro, 3.2 GHz 8 Core, MacBook Pro, 2.2 GHz C2D
My iStuff: 32 GB iPhone 3G S, 30 GB iPod Video, 16 GB iPod Touch
My OS': Mac OS X Leopard, Mac OS X Tiger, openSUSE 10.3, Win XP
I was on the Mac-Forums honor roll for September 2007
Just to throw this at you... the Mac Pro can run with 256 bit addressing, just make sure you buy memory in quad pairs (4x512 = 2GB, 4x1 = 4GB, 4x2 = 8GB, etc).
