Five and a half years ago, AMD launched its Athlon 64 processor lineup, extolling the benefits of 64-bit computing and what it’d mean for the future. It didn’t take Intel long to follow suit on the desktop. From there, the infrastructure—the operating systems and drivers—began falling into place to support more 64-bit software.
Today, 64-bit compatibility is almost a given. In fact, in the business space, where 64-bit computing has always been seen to have the most promise, applications have emerged that will only run in 64-bit. Even Small Business Server 2008, a relatively entry-level operating environment for businesses with up to 75 users, is now 64-bit-only due to its inclusion of Exchange Server 2007.
Why did Microsoft make the executive decision to launch its latest messaging platform exclusively in 64-bit trim? According to a blog post by Chris Mitchell in Microsoft’s Exchange Performance Engineering Team, the application uses 64-bit addressing to get its virtual hands on more system memory, preventing repeated trips back and forth to disk. In Chris’ example, an older version of Exchange might have access to 900 MB of a 32-bit server’s 4 GB ceiling. In a 4,000-user enterprise, that's 225 KB of RAM per user—not nearly enough for all of the messages, rules, calendar entries, and contacts in a typical mailbox. Moving to 64-bit and upgrading servers to 10s of gigabytes (Chris’ recommendation in that same 4,000-user business is 24 GB) softens the load on storage.
But desktops aren’t nearly as hard-up for memory, right? We expected 64-bit computing to trickle down from the enterprise, but gamers want to know: where is the benefit from this technology today?
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Gaming In 64-Bit: Tom's Tests, Microsoft Weighs In : Introduction
