Introduction
By now, many people have probably heard the various reports about 64-bit computing coming to consumers. Apple was the first to offer the hardware with a 64-bit processor with their new G5 system. AMD has just released its Athlon 64 processor that has support for the first 64-bit operating system (a variant of Linux). But is this shift to 64-bit computing going to be a huge boon for the consumers?
Understanding Bits
All computer processors are based on binary math because of the transistors that comprise the semiconductors inside the chips. To put things in very simple terms, a bit is a single 1 or 0 either stored or processed by a transistor. All processors are referred to by their bit processing ability. For approximately the last 10 years or so, 32-bit computing has been used since the introduction of Intel's 386 platform. So what does the bit count mean?
This bit rating of the processor determines the largest numerical number that processor can handle. The largest number that can be processed in a single clock cycle will be equivalent to 2 to the power of the bit rating. Thus, a 32-bit processor can handle a number up to 2^32 or roughly 4.3 billion. Any number greater than this will require more than one clock cycle to process. A 64-bit processor on the other hand can handle a number of a 2^64 or roughly 18.4 quintillion (18,400,000,000,000,000,000). This means that a 64-bit processor would be able to more efficiently handle large number mathematics.
Memory is the Key
One of the other items directly affected by the bit rating of the processor is the amount of memory that the system can support and access. Let's take a look at the current 32-bit platforms of today. Currently 32-bit processors and operating system can support a total of 4 gigabytes of memory in the computer. Of the 4 gigabytes of memory, the operating systems can only allocate 2 gigabytes of memory to a given application.
Looking at the Athlon 64, AMD included support for 40-bits of memory registers rather than 64-bits. Even with this cost cutting measure, the Athlon 64 is able to support a total system memory of approximately 136GB of RAM. This is well beyond what the memory market can even supply to computers currently. In addition to this, a 64-bit operating system can also allocate an individual 4GB block of memory for each application.
Now for most consumers, this won't make much of a difference because most home systems don't even come with 1GB of memory, but for high-end users that do CAD/CAM or scientific research, this can make a huge difference. It also is very important for server systems running large applications such as databases.
