Why is 32bit still around?

[Bulkley]

Look at as being market driven, not controlled by the OS developers. All of those 32 bit machines represent opportunities for the developers to sell updated 32 bit OS's. When that market diminishes enough then 32 bit systems would freeze.

You're probably right. I'm sure my view is skewed by age. I remember when each development was greeted with fanfare and gobbled up as fast as people could adapt. Now it seems that we are in the good enough era.

[toomanyhobbies]

I'm posting this from what is still my primary laptop at about 7 years old. (Inspiron 1420N, shipped with Ubuntu back in the day)
It's 64-bit, but it only has 1 Gb of RAM, so I have little or no reason to run 64-bit.
In fact, many 64-bit applications run slower on this machine because they consume more memory, and this thing has slooow RAM.

Furthermore, I use it for a lot of portable snes emulation, and my preferred emulator is zsnes, which is partly written in 32-bit assembly. (Won't ever run on 64-bit)
So I have one personal computer that I still prefer to run 32-bit Debian on.

And I also maintain a pentium 3-based voip server that has been running almost 24/7 for about 14 years. It still keeps up with what it is used for, and it can only do so with 32-bit Debian stable.

Edit: I should add something that I noticed the other day: CentOS has dropped 32-bit support in their latest release and I've already seen complaints about it. I doubt that Debian will do that in the near future, given their emphasis on supporting a large number of CPU architectures. This makes me happy.

[confuseling]

I heard 64 bit uses more ram simply because every stored address / pointer is larger, and there are an awful lot of them in any non-trivial program. But don't take my word for it, I'm no programmer.

Theories I've heard about why drivers are closed source include:

1) Upstream licencing / patent issues. Complex drivers won't be using purely in-house tech.

2) In-house trade secrets. No point making it any easier for the competition, and probably quite expensive doing audits to decide what you can give away safely, and then cleanly separating it out.

3) Dirty secrets. People write terrible code, and steal other people's code all the time. It's either directly expensive or just bad press if we find out. Artificial tiering happens too - sometimes cheaper to sell the same graphics card with a worse driver in a lower market segment than actually redesign / retool to make a cheaper version.

They're probably all sometimes true. At the end of the day it's a cost / benefit analysis, and I doubt they think they have much to gain by opening the source when Free OSes are still comparatively uncommon outside certain segments like servers, and writing drivers is extremely hard, so the number of people likely to be prepared to contribute to a commercial entity's drivers for free will be small.

[keithpeter]

Edit: I should add something that I noticed the other day: CentOS has dropped 32-bit support in their latest release and I've already seen complaints about it. I doubt that Debian will do that in the near future, given their emphasis on supporting a large number of CPU architectures. This makes me happy.

I keep an eye on the Enterprise Linux world. CentOS and the other clones (Springdale Linux, Scientific Linux, Oracle Linux) of Red Hat Enterprise Linux basically follow what Red Hat push over the wall. RHEL is 64 bit only, so CentOS is at present. There is talk of a 32 bit build of CentOS in a few months.

Springdale Linux (aka PUIAS Linux) have popped out a 32 bit build because as their developer said(*) on springdale-users (Google groups) they had to build a lot of i686 packages anyway to support 32 bit apps and the extra work to do the kernel and other base packages wasn't much. It is available for testing as a boot image (aka netinstall) if anyone is interested.

http://springdale.princeton.edu/data/puias/7.0/

This begs the question of external repositories (epel, elrepo &c) that are important in the EL world as the core RHEL release is small.

(*)I'm paraphrasing, find the original on Google if you want the detail

[PhilGil]

You still see 32-bit machines in businesses, too. The large, national insurance carrier I am affiliated with still ships brand new, core-i machines with Win 7 32-bit. I assume it's because some of their custom-built applications aren't 64-bit compatible.

[Bulkley]

The enterprise for which I work standardized on 32-bit so they'd only have to maintain one base image and only have to push updates for one OS. They're doing the same thing for the Win7 migration running now, but that platform will be 64-bit only. Supporting multiple OS is expensive

What do you mean by "Win7 migration"? Win 7 is off the market where I live; it's all Win8+ now.

I agree, supporting multiple OS is expensive. That's why I figured that the big outfits like MS would have abandoned 32bit by now.

[llivv]

I agree, supporting multiple OS is expensive. That's why I figured that the big outfits like MS would have abandoned 32bit by now.

They probably don't want to loose their 32 bit customers $$.
It's much easier to reduce support - ( ha ha ) $ support - over time as the 32 bit customer base dwindles.

[Bulkley]

One of my constant memory lapses is that large companies sell to very large customers. When you or I complain about problems with a device driver only our friends are listening. When Boeing complains, the supplier pays attention. When Boeing, Spar Aerospace, NASA, the Pentagon, McDonald-Douglas and Intel complain, said supplier will either fix the problem or walk the plank. So, those of you who are reminding me that big companies may have established systems that they would rather not upgrade are right.

[llivv]

One of my constant memory lapses is that large companies sell to very large customers. When you or I complain about problems with a device driver only our friends are listening. When Boeing complains, the supplier pays attention. When Boeing, Spar Aerospace, NASA, the Pentagon, McDonald-Douglas and Intel complain, said supplier will either fix the problem or walk the plank. So, those of you who are reminding me that big companies may have established systems that they would rather not upgrade are right.

There are all sorts of other games the big palyers have. Enter-prizes.

[Nuke]

I imagine that there are a lot of 32 bit machines around, i.e., having a 32 bit bus. Would a 64 bit os even work on one of those?

No

[mardybear]

Why is 32bit still around?

Figured i would chime in. I run several computers on a home network/office setup. Not a single one of these systems is 64bit. I prefer to re-use/run old hardware to stay frugal and to reduce some of the impact my household has on the environment. Without 32bit operating systems i would no longer have a computer/network. Old school linux always prided themselves in having an OS that was relatively lean...so the why is 32bit still around question kinda surprises me. Someone above commented that current hardware has reached a 'good enough' level and i fully agree. All my systems, even though they are old, do everything needed.

Please don't start a flame war about new hardware being more energy efficient, it's not (referring to desktop computers, not running a raspberry pi or mini system). Those multi-core processors don't run on water! Every time i build a newer upgraded computer it requires sticking in a significantly larger power supply. Tweaking power management settings and turning off the computer when not in use is quite efficient. There's so much waste in the world today, it's simply not sustainable for 7 billion people to throw things away every couple years because it's 'old'

[Nuke]

Why is 32bit still around?

Not a single one of [my PCs] is 64bit. I prefer to re-use/run old hardware .... Without 32bit operating systems i would no longer have a computer/network. ....... it's simply not sustainable for 7 billion people to throw things away every couple years because it's 'old'

I agree entirely with your sentiments there. I am typing this on a 22 yo keyboard (IBM AT - it will last for ever) and on a m'board/CPU that I bought seven and a half years ago, second-hand on eBay. I have only just exchanged a 524Mb hard drive (new in 1998, but not my main HD recently!) for a second-hand 40Gb from eBay. All in a 15 yo tower case.

But, that CPU, second-hand over 7 years ago, is 64-bit. The mystery is: why did PC makers continue to churn out 32-bit kit, and people bought it, long after 64-bit was available, and why it was not promoted more than it was? Out of interest, when did you buy your PCs?

I saw the whole rise to dominance of the PC and Microsoft. In the earlier days, every minor improvement was hyped with massive publicity. The CPU :- 25MHz CPU! 33MHz! 50MHz! 100MHz!!! The HDD:- 40Mb! 105Mb! 150Mb! 200Mb! 524Mb! (They stuck there for a time). Memory :- 500kb! 640kb! (enough for anybody) 1Mb! 4Mb! (another sticking point). Multi-media ready! Internet ready! Then 32-bit !!! Every time, the marketing droids told us we all had to replace our PCs.

Yet when 64-bit arrived, just when you thought that Marketing would have a field day, there was hardly a wimper. I suspect conspiracy. Microsoft were very slow to get out a 64-bit Windows, long after the chip makers and Linux, so not wishing to be shown up I guess they ordered all their partners' marketing to go easy on it, and by the time MS did get their act together it was old hat. When I was looking to buy this 64-bit CPU I found it difficult even to find out which processors were 64-bit rather than 32-bit - the advice on forums was "It doesn't matter, you can run 32-bit anyway!". Much Linux software in repositories was in 32-bit only - advice on forums was "You can always compile it yourself!".

Looks like the boot is on the other foot now. I don't want to see the demise of 32-bit either- three out of my four PCs are 32-bit, but recognise that new developments should focus on 64-bit. But no-one is stopping you or me from continuing to run our 32-bit OS's (they don't wear out), and we can always compile any new stuff ourselves

[Bulkley]

I saw the whole rise to dominance of the PC and Microsoft. In the earlier days, every minor improvement was hyped with massive publicity. The CPU :- 25MHz CPU! 33MHz! 50MHz! 100MHz!!! The HDD:- 40Mb! 105Mb! 150Mb! 200Mb! 524Mb! (They stuck there for a time). Memory :- 500kb! 640kb! (enough for anybody) 1Mb! 4Mb! (another sticking point). Multi-media ready! Internet ready! Then 32-bit !!! Every time, the marketing droids told us we all had to replace our PCs.

Yet when 64-bit arrived, just when you thought that Marketing would have a field day, there was hardly a wimper.

That's exactly what inspired me to start this thread.

[llivv]

I saw the whole rise to dominance of the PC and Microsoft. In the earlier days, every minor improvement was hyped with massive publicity. The CPU :- 25MHz CPU! 33MHz! 50MHz! 100MHz!!! The HDD:- 40Mb! 105Mb! 150Mb! 200Mb! 524Mb! (They stuck there for a time). Memory :- 500kb! 640kb! (enough for anybody) 1Mb! 4Mb! (another sticking point). Multi-media ready! Internet ready! Then 32-bit !!! Every time, the marketing droids told us we all had to replace our PCs.

Yet when 64-bit arrived, just when you thought that Marketing would have a field day, there was hardly a wimper.

That's exactly what inspired me to start this thread.

I'll bet the reason there was hardly a wimper about 64 bit in the beginning of it's amd/intel release was that everyone knew how long it would take m$ to build a 64 bit OS to run on it.
Sun and SGI amongst other unix vendors had been running 64 hardware and software for at least 10 years by the time amd/intel released their versions of 64 bit hardware.

[tomazzi]

First of all, I know that this thread is "a bit outdated", but unfortunatelly, there are no good responses in this thread.
So here's the good answer:

First of all, when the i286/i386 was presented, it was already outdated: even first 8086 was outdated, because at that time, fully 32bit processors have existed (M68K for example). So Intel have started as a manufacturerer of the worst CPU in the world. The only reason why people were buing this, is that it was cheap (and crappy).

Perhaps it will be controversary, but I'm going to say this: Intel made the worst family of CPU's in the world, and wins, because they were cheap. That's the only reason.

With time it became obvious, that shitty architecure can't be revamped ever again - and the first company, who realised that was NOT Intel - it was AMD - that's why we have now amd64 architecture available for download. Intel have tried to force his own solution, called Itanium - a piece of crap, which have never proved its usability.

So what is AMD64? well, to be honest it's also crap. What AMD have "developed" is what Motorola (Freescale now) has known for decades: registers are faster than cache. M68K had 16 32-bit, general-purpose registers. (some of them were address registers and had spoecial rules assigned), however, after something like 30-40 Years AMD have discovered the Motorola processors...

So, they finally came to conclusion that it is extremely stupid to have 64K pages, and 640K memory limit on boot time and, that more reagistrers == higher performance (well, 30 yeras have passed - that's really brilliant)

---------------

One of the most comon mistakes made by customers and users of 64-bit CPU's is that 64-bit CPU's are somehow "faster" - they are not. 64-bit mode is mostly a fix for a bug existing for decades - Intel crappy CPUs were lacking registers - the "local memory" for variables - and 64-bit extension has nothing to do with 64 bit (addressing, memory space) - the most importatant thing it offers, is the availability of adfitional registers, so that crappy CPUs can be programmed without frequent calls to stack push-pop funcions.

Regerds.

[Bulkley]

So, tomazzi, what are your prescriptions? Which processor? Which bit architecture?

[tomazzi]

Well, if we are talking about regular PC desktops, then amd64 (or intel clones) seems to be be best choice. Mostly misleadig (sponsored) tests are not showing the truth: AMD and INTEL CPU's are equally good - read the timings of instructions, instead of bullshits.
In case of servers, mobile devices - Tilera/Epiphany/ARM are far better choices, as they are having really big/important upates and they are generally faster ... (at least from the design point of view - i'm not going to take resposibility for a crappy code - f.e. ARM has great FIQ feature, but it is rarely used...)

Regards.

[Sarge-in-charge]

There is no point using 64 bit on a desktop, unless you edit HD video or retouch very high resolution pictures. However, with 8 GB desktops common nowadays, running 64 bit on a desktop won't hurt you either.

For servers, yeah, 64 bit all the way, especially for hosts running a lot of virtual guests, and for big database servers were you can load the whole database in RAM and cache as much disk as possible.

A lot of people have printers and scanners where the manufacturer has not put out drivers for Windows 7, so they are using 32 bit Windows XP.