G+_Ryan McCarty Posted September 12, 2013 Share Posted September 12, 2013 Just listened to your latest podcast and wanted to thank you for the job well done on the entire series. In the part regarding the new iPhone, you mentioned that 64-bit processing is only useful for extremely large calculations and numbers that don't fit in a 32-bit register. I'm not sure where I heard this but I was under the impression that a 64-bit processor is capable of executing one 64-bit operation or TWO 32-bit operations simultaneously. In this case a 64-bit processor does indeed provide a significant boost in performance across all operations, big or small. Is this true? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Travis Hershberger Posted September 13, 2013 Share Posted September 13, 2013 While that makes logical sense, the way 64 bit processors run 32 bit software does not allow this. The way information is moved and calculations done would have to be completely reworked. For example, 2 + 2 is calculated by moving the entire contents of 2 registers into a 3rd register with the result. The processor is not able to use just half of a register. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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