Ubuntu 14.10 Linux 32-bit vs. 64-bit Performance

[wizard69]

I agree, x86-32 should have died years ago, but Intel, adobe, and MS unfortunately kept it alive. But as these benchmarks show, not all applications have any particular gain running in 64 bit. There doesn't appear to be any significant downsides though, so there's really no reason to stick with 32 bit anymore (unless you're forced to).

It is extremely rare that you loose performance on mainstream apps. You might loose performance on software that manipulates lots of small data structures where 32 bit pointers save a lot of space in the cache. Those sorts of apps are rare and more so cache sizes these days are huge.

I personally don't understand why anyone with a 64-bit compatible CPU specifically chooses to use a 32-bit OS. Of course there are scenarios where that is the best route, but it's pretty rare.

Legacy software! This is a massive problem at work where we have huge issues getting technical apps to run on modern Windows.

For the record - regarding my earlier post, I was merely saying that in many cases, there is no gain in optimizing software for 64 bit. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it, and I wholeheartedly welcome 64 bit ports (preferably optimized).

Actually on Intels hardware there are multiple examples of where a bit of optimization for 64 bit had done wonders. Just the extra registers have had a big impact on recompiled apps. Not all apps of course but AMD's architecture had a significant impact on what I86 is capable of.

[wizard69]

There seems to be a lot of information about how when you have 2GB of memory or less, it makes sense to run 32-bit OS because it uses less memory (some say that it is faster too in that case). Then again there are others that say the increase in memory usage when using 64-bit is negligible.

They would both be right. In the norm 64 bit is a win for most users. There are pathological cases where 64 bit does slow things down. Most people though are better off wt the 64 bit hardware and the 64 bit supporting software.

My 2GB home server is currently 64-bit but I'm tempted to try 32-bit OS on it to see if any of the claims are true or not.

Don't waste your time. For one it is a server that you apparently have working correctly so why mess it up. If yo really need to experiment just add more RAM.

[speculatrix]

way back when I had hoped that Microsoft would say that Windows 7 would only come in 64 bit versions, or, at least, only the Home version would be 32, and to announce that Windows 8 and beyond would drop 32 bit builds, and seriously cut down the backwards compatibility.

I hoped for this so that it would put an end to some of the cheap crap hardware being foisted onto ignorant consumers.

sadly no sign of it yet.

[Sonadow]

way back when I had hoped that Microsoft would say that Windows 7 would only come in 64 bit versions, or, at least, only the Home version would be 32, and to announce that Windows 8 and beyond would drop 32 bit builds, and seriously cut down the backwards compatibility.

I hoped for this so that it would put an end to some of the cheap crap hardware being foisted onto ignorant consumers.

sadly no sign of it yet.

I have it from a person inside Microsoft that they have wanted to do this for a very long time already but cannot afford to because it will be as good as suicide. Especially if one takes into account the sheer amount of legacy systems and software that many huge organizations need to support.

In fact just a couple of months ago I was deploying 20 new PCs for a company and they explicitly demanded that their new computers ship with only 4GB of memory and 32bit Windows 7, non-negotiable. When I asked the IT head for his reason, he simply said that the staff run a 15-yr-old in-house application on production that does not play nice with x64 Windows' WoW compatibility layer.

[Krysto]

So Canonical intends to support 32-bit until 2021? That seems crazy to me. 16.04 LTS should be 64-bit only.

[drSeehas]

... Memory is cheap so its a shame if you still use 2Gb on a PC ...

There are netbooks where the hardware doesn't support more than 2 GB (Intel Atom N2x0/N4xx/N5x0).

... while that's the norm on smartphones.

The norm?
I would say, you can buy 3 times more smartphone models with 1 GB than models with 2 GB, not counting models with less than 1 GB.

[gilboa]

Me too. Firefox is probably the perfect example. And stuff like GoogleEarth is even worse, afaik it's a 32 bit app wrapped in something to run on 64 bit

Huh?!?!
$ file /opt/google/earth/free/googleearth-bin
/opt/google/earth/free/googleearth-bin: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.24, BuildID[sha1]=693eb30111744b4518910a316785d954c7a1b0fd, stripped

$ file /opt/google/chrome/chrome
/opt/google/chrome/chrome: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.26, BuildID[sha1]=03aeceee37c0f4636f56e673de4ff235d51b15f7, stripped

Fedora 20, x86_64, RPMs downloaded from Google.com.

- Gilboa

[SciK]

Huh?!?!

$ file /opt/google/earth/free/googleearth-bin 
/opt/google/earth/free/googleearth-bin: ELF [b]64-bit[/b] LSB executable, [b]x86-64[/b], version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.24, BuildID[sha1]=693eb30111744b4518910a316785d954c7a1b0fd, stripped

Fedora 20, x86_64, RPMs downloaded from Google.com.

- Gilboa

If you look at the metadata of the 64-bit .deb, you?ll see:

Depends: lsb-core (>= 3.2), ia32-libs

No idea why they did that for the .deb and not the .rpm, but this is probably what mark45 was referring to.

[gilboa]

If you look at the metadata of the 64-bit .deb, you?ll see:

Depends: lsb-core (>= 3.2), ia32-libs

No idea why they did that for the .deb and not the .rpm, but this is probably what mark45 was referring to.

Weird.
Just re-checked, running google earth under gdb, and it is indeed a pure 64bit binary.

- Gilboa

[steveriley]

If you look at the metadata of the 64-bit .deb, you?ll see:

Depends: lsb-core (>= 3.2), ia32-libs

No idea why they did that for the .deb and not the .rpm, but this is probably what mark45 was referring to.

Hm. Then how do people even get that thing to install? The last Ubuntu release to include ia32-libs was Raring. On Debian Wheezy 64-bit, ia32-libs depends on ia32-libs-i386, which isn't available for installation.