Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray. It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With tech Stuff from how stuff dot com. Hello, everyone, Welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Pollette, and I'm an editor at how stuff works dot com. And sitting just a bit across from me is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Midnight, not a sound on the pavement. Has the moon lost
her memory? She's smiling alone. This podcast will be much better than KATS Yes, I should hope, So I'm going to listen to it again and again. Anyway, So, yeah, today we're gonna talk. We had actually some requests come in about explaining thirty two bit versus sixty four bit in the terms of computers. What does that mean? What is sixty bit automatically better than thirty two bit? What's
the deal behind this? Because we've seen some operating systems come out over the last several years, especially since like Windows Vista that had sixty four bit versions and thirty two bit versions and not all would work on every computer. What's up with that? Anyway? Well, the answers to those questions is basically yes, no, maybe it's a computer architecture question. As it turns out, so and and the answer is is not definitive. I mean it's sort of well anyway,
let's talk about it. Okay, yeah, so let's talk about what it all means to be thirty two bit versus sixty four bit in the first place. So, well, that part's easy. We're talking about computer architecture here. Now, just on a high level, this is going to be very general for all of you. So all of you computer scientists out there, Uh, you might want to fast forward a little bit because your your eyes may start bulging if you hear me describe computers in these simplistic terms.
Make yourself a sandwich. But in general, you have this thing in your computer, the central processing unit, all right, And they're basically two ways to try and make a CPU, uh do more work or or be more efficient. Um, and I'm saying basically two ways are actually more than that, especially if you go into multi core processing. But if you're talking about single core processor, you can either make the processor work faster, which means that it can operate.
It could complete more operations in the same amount of time as a slower CPU. Right, So operations are done in uh in in uh cycles for a second. So how many times the clock cycles per second with that particular processor essentially means how many operations that can do, although some operations require multiple cycles. Okay, so you can make your computer go faster by putting in a faster processor.
But another way computers can go faster is if they can process more information at one time than a slower process or a processor that runs at the same speed but does less information at the time. Because for a processor to to actually execute commands and to crunch numbers
essentially is what a secret is doing. It's computing. Yeah, it's pulling information from the computer's memory and then executing a series of commands that are dictated by whatever the application that's running says it has to do, and then you get the output. All right, So, if you have a narrow pathway, then only so much information can come
through at a time. If you make that pathway wider, more information can come in and that same amount of time, the information is not necessarily traveling faster, is just more of they can go through. So if we use the handy dandy, let's talk about a building metaphor that I always like to go with. Let's say you've got a building, it's got a doorway that's one person wide, and got a whole bunch of people who want to go in, uh to that building, but they all have to move
at a specific rate. They cannot run the been the hall monitors are there and they're telling everyone no running. Then it's gonna take a certain amount of time for all those people to get into the building filing in single file through that one person wide opening. Now let's take that same building, but we've done some reconstruction on it.
We've made that building so that there are three people can walk side by side into that and you still tell everyone no running, so they're moving at the same speed, but now more people can go into the building in the same amount of time as it took. You know, you're you're gonna take less time to get everybody in than it took for the single person version of that building. So that's kind of the idea behind this computer architecture with thirty two bit versus sixty four bit at a
very high level. Yeah, and the thing is, it's, uh, there are a number of things that affect U in your overall computer architecture. There are a number of things that affect how much information can be handled by the CPU at a time. For example, you know all the different cabling and everything else that's in there. I mean, you're if you have a better graphics, faster graphics processor,
your graphics processor will handle more graphics. But we're speaking specifically of the CPU and not of the cables that run that information to the different parts of the computer and those things. We're talking about the actual processor itself. And there is one other thing, however, that uh, that it needs to handle this and and that is forgotten what it was? What is it? Data bus? Memory? I remember? Now? Well, the data bus is the the the pathway between memory
and the CPU. Well, yeah, that's the thing. See that that pathway has to be ample enough to to carry uh information. But the memory, the amount of memory you have, and how your CPU handles memory is pivotal to how well your computer can handle instruction. Yeah. So that's when we talk about computer architecture. You're not just talking about one component in the computer. If you put a sixty four bit processor in a computer and you didn't change
anything else, it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter, Yeah, because it because even though you've got a sixty four bit processor and there the rest of the computer is not designed with the architecture that's necessary to take advantage of that. So with the memory, you you know, sixty four bit processor would be able to access more memory because the sixty four bit that talks about how much information can come through, right, and so it's effectively twice as much
as the thirty two bit. Right, so you've got what go ahead, I heard the inhale of stopping anyway. The so, so the data bus is it's not a bus like get on the bus, you know, or deserts or desert bus. It will drive for eight hours and get one point. Yeah, yeah, well who Tucson. So yeah, the data bus is essentially the pathway from the memory to the CPU. So you with a sixty four bit system, you're gonna have more memory, more random access memory, more RAM You're going to have
a larger data bus. The data bus that's the sixty four bit data bus that is going to allow sixty four bit information to pass through as opposed to thirty two bit, and then the sixty four bit processor that can process information. This does not work well for every kind of computer problem. There are certain kinds of computer problems that just don't need that. It's not that, you know, it's not that it's harmful, it just isn't beneficial. So in other words, let's say that we go back to
that building example. All right, and let's say that you only have one person who has to get in the building. Well, it doesn't matter how why the doorway is. If there's no obstruction, then that person is going to get in the building at the same speed. Whether the doorways one person wide or three people wide. Well, same sort of thing.
If you have a computer application that doesn't require massive uh, it doesn't require the CPU to constantly be pulling information from memory, then it's not gonna see a big benefit to switching from thirty two bit system to a sixty four bit system. Oh and I forgot another piece. We were talking about computer architecture. With all the physical hardware, you also have to have an operating system that can
take advantage of the sixty four bit architecture. So if you have a sixty four bit system, you would need to get an operating system that's also a sixty four bit operating system if you wanted to run at that full speed. Most sixty four bit systems are capable at running thirty two bit UH software UM usually through either UH there's like a there might be a thirty two bit core that's incorporated in the TOM itself, or it
might be that there's an emulator running. But usually a sixty four bit system is capable of running thirty two bits software. If it weren't, then you would rapidly discover that most software would be unusable because not not everyone has upgraded up to sixty four bit yet. Before you send us a list of all the software that you've tried on your sixty four bit system that doesn't work,
remember your mileage may vary. Some restrictions apply. It also depends heavily upon the actual operating system and how it was providing that support. Because again, if you're talking about emulators that does that's not a one size fits all approach, you know, So go ahead. I was gonna say, here's the interesting part about the thirty two bit versus sixty
four bit systems. Thirty two bit systems can only address a certain amount well, all of them can address a certain amount of computer memory of RAM, And with thirty two bit systems, you can only address for gigabytes of RAM, and back in the day, everyone thought four gigabytes a RAM, Wow, we'll never need that much. That that famous quote attributed to Bill Gates, which apparently he never said about how much. I forgotten how much it was, like megabytes or something
like that. But um, but yeah, people said, well, that's that's plenty for what we do. But the thing about it is, now we're using computers to do high end graphics work and high end soundwork. Um, scientific calculations, scientific calculations. We expect our game machines to render beautiful three D graphics where where the hair on people's heads moves with the breeze and the leaves, there's no clipping or effect.
It doesn't affect the physics engine at all. Yeah. Yeah, And the thing is, at a certain point, uh, you're you're kind of looking for more from the system because we're able to do these things now. So they've enabled processors, and these sixty four bit processors are not brand new. They didn't come out in These have been on the market for for several years and in fact, the earliest ones date from the seventies. Yeah. Yeah, the Kraze supercomputer,
the original kraz one supercomputer had a sixty four bit architecture. Yes, so, while um so, while thirty two bit machines can address for gigabytes of RAM, a sixty four bit machine and this sort of sounds like our I p v six thing can address seventeen point two billion gigabytes of RAM, which is far more than any of our machines will hold at this point. Now, I've seen machines that will
hold sixty four gigabytes of RAM. They're probably some really high end machines that will hold even more than that, but it's still far more than the operating system and computer hardware can access right now. So basically, this is a build for the future, the immediate foreseeable future, and the more. Um. If you've ever heard somebody say, hey, I know, if you really want to speed up your computer, a cheap way to do that is to add more RAM. Well,
in general that's true. If you have more memory space, that gives your computer a lot more room to handle uh, regular calculations, because keep in mind that your operating system is taking up a certain amount of RAM and all the other operating stuff under the UM that that's hanging out with it, like say um virus protection software and other things that you use on a daily basis, and then you open up Photoshop to work on on stuff and it runs incredibly slow. And why, oh man, why
does this run so slow? Well, if it had more memory, it would be far easier for the computer to allocate and resources to Photoshop because it's already got a bunch of stuff in memory. So yeah, it's it's it's both the processor speed itself and the speed at which it can or the amount of memory it can access a think of a huge difference. Yeah, think of it this way,
like your your computer. If if you're processor had to access your hard drive every time you need to pull up information, it would slow everything down, right, Like if it had to go into your hard drive in order to pull whatever the information is in order to execute the file you just said, or the execute the command you just made, then it would slow things down to a crawl. So if you were playing a game, for example, and you press the jump button and the and so
you've you've executed the command. You've pressed the button that's going to cause your character to jump. Apparently that character is Mario, then the jump man. The computer will then take that command, it would have to search your hard drive to find out all right, I've been given this command, here's the sub parameters that the game is in right now. What happens next? It would get that information, process it, and then send it back to you, and this would
take a long time. RAM what it does is it allows you allows the computer to pull the essentially the most pertinent information to whatever is going on right then and there to be in a temporary storage space so that the processor doesn't have to access the hard drive in order to load stuff. It just accesses RAM. And that's much faster because you know the RAM is just going to be there for the duration of the instance
that you're on, like until you shut your computer down. UM. This is also why if you're playing a game on a console and you get to a new level and you get that loading screen, well, essentially it's loading that information into the consoles RAMS so that when you're playing it doesn't have to refer back to the hard drive and and that would impact your experience. So that's the
same sort of idea. And now with the sixty four bit system, what you've done is dramatically increase the amount of RAM your system can potentially have, which means the CPU will not have to go back to the hard drive as frequently. Yeah, and the thing is, I mean load more information all at one time. Sorry, no, no, I'm sorry. I didn't realize, but my brain clicked. I had to go back to hard drive space. I see,
I see where we should increase your RAM. So, um, I've been trying well, um, and and this is great. You know. Of course, you can always speed stuff up by closing things that you're not using, you know, but uh, this, this presents a real advantage for people who are are doing things that are memory heavy, or people who need to keep multiple programs open. Say you're editing an article and you have your word processor and your graphics programs. You can do the photos that go along with the article,
and you have your email open. I've got it to do list already. You don't have to drive at home like that. But yeah, I mean you're working on all those things simultaneously. If you have enough RAM, you should be able to work fairly quickly as you as you go from one back and forth, you know, to the other. Because it's already loaded into RAM, the computer doesn't have to go and search for stuff. So let's use Let's
use my home computer as an example. UM. It's about three years old at the time we're recording this UM, and it has a physical memory capacity of four gigabytes of RAM. Now I have an operating system that will run in either thirty two bit or sixty four bit mode. The question is should I boot into sixty four bit mode or should I just default to thirty two bit
depending on what you're using. Actually, i'd say just default the thirty two bit because it won't even I can't even take advantage of the sixty four bit advantage of being able to address more RAM because I don't even have the capacity for more than four gigabytes and RAM. It doesn't make any sense to do that. But UM, and you can have a top ended machine, but if you're running an older operating system on it that won't run in sixty four bit mode, you're not able to
take advantage of it. So, as Jonathan pointed out earlier, you have to have the machine, you have to have more memory than for gigabytes, and you have to have the operating system basically to take advantage of these benefits. But if you do that will really help you out. Yeah, Like, let's say that you want to do some heavy duty video editing and and let's see you're working on a
feature link film. Well, the benefit to a sixty four bit system is that you would be able to to load a lot more footage in a single go than you would if you had a thirty two bit system. It would just be much faster, much more efficient. And it's not again necessarily because the processor is faster. Now, grant,
a faster processor also helps things a lot. And then we've talked in the past a bit about multi core processors, which uh seem to give seem to be faster, even though if you look at the processor speeds, they may not be that much faster than a single core processor. In that case, the reason why it's it's uh working a more efficiently is because it's dividing up computer problems into segments, and each core works on a segment of the problem and then it ends up being put together
kind of like a puzzle in the end. And that's what the you know, that's why a multi core will work best for certain kinds of problems. Again, just like we were talking about with the sixty four bit versus thirty two bit, a multi core processor isn't necessarily going to execute every single application at a faster speed than a comparable single core processor because some just don't. Some problems just don't break down into components. Uh. The ones
that do we call parallel problems. And uh, in in case of grid computing, when you're talking about things like folding proteins, you call them embarrassingly parallel problems. I'm sorry, didn't mean to bring up the subject. But anyway, Uh, that's that's a that's another key element to computer speeds. So, yeah, sixty four bit operating systems. When when Windows came out with Windows Vista for six or four bit Windows Vista,
there were some problems. Okay, first of all, there were problems with within Windows Vista, right, that operating system got a really bad name pretty quickly because there were a lot of name Oh I'm sorry, I'm just saying that they had a reputation for being not the best operating system. There were a lot of features that people didn't care for, and there were a lot of problems with its supporting
certain kinds of software versus not supporting other kinds. And it's not yeah, right, so but the sixty four bit system when it came out, there were even more problems, and part of it was because it was, you know, fairly young for the personal computing era. Against sixty four bit architecture had been around for for more than a decade, but but the actual use of it in personal computers was pretty much brand new when the sixty four bit
Windows Vista version came out. Since then, we've seen computer engineers really kind of optimized operating systems for sixty four bit, so it's not as big a problem now. Unix had a leg up a are pretty much everybody else on that one. But now we're seeing it with other systems, not just not just Unix or or its variants. So should you go out and buy a sixty four bit system,
My suggestion would be unless your depends. Yeah, unless you're really working with some heavy duty videos software, you're doing scientific calculations, or you just want the most screaming video games ever made, you probably don't need to worry about it too much. Because the thing about video game machines is often you do have a dedicated graphics processor, which takes a lot of the helps. Yeah, it takes a lot of the weight off of your CPU, although you
then have to add weight with a cooling system. Um. But yeah, I would say that a sixty four bit system probably is not necessary for most people right now. Now, over time, as the the whole all the parts get cheaper than the operating systems will become or standardized. We'll probably see sixty four bit become the news standard. And in that case it won't be a question of sixty four versus thirty two. It will be sixty four bit is what's in the store, so that's what you get.
But right now, if you're shopping around, uh, just keep in mind that even though the number is bigger, it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to experience. Uh, it doesn't mean your computing computing experience is immediately going to be twice as fast as what it used to be on your old thirty two bit system. Yeah. Yeah, And um, as far as one systems go, I mean, the thing is for for home computing. Really, I don't think the average person needs anything like that, or or will need
anything like that for quite some time. If you're trying to give sentience to your refrigerator, you may need a hundred and twenty eight system for something like you know, high end scientific computing. Well, sure, you know, super computer type stuff. If you're searching for intelligent life, possibly in this office, that joke is coming. Uh no, but yeah, I mean when you when you're already able to address seventeen exabytes of memory and you can't even fit that
inside the box. Yeah, there's no way to the memory because the Yeah, you would have to have a computer the size of well, the old ones because and I'm not talking about the old computers. I'm talking about the fictional Cathulu gods, the old ones. You have to have a computer that size, so large that would rip the sanity from your mind. Perhaps less scary, but depends on what it's running. Yeah. So I mean this is it's sort of again like the I p V six thing.
This is the kind of thing that's going to get us through a long time. We will the the average person is not going to need to worry about this again anytime. Yeah. Now we say a long time, but keep in mind, is computing a long time. Exactly five years is a long time in computing terms. I just wanted to make that clear before we had people right in Well, I still remember, you know, talking about RAM being a cheap way to upgrade your computer. Um, I can buy another two gigabyte chip and pull out the
one that's in the available slot. I've got now to upgrade to a full four. I've got three. I've got two slots in mine, and it came with to one gigabyte RAM sticks. I pulled one out and put it two in there, and I could do the other one for I think last time I looked twenty six or thirty dollar or something like that. I remember buying a two hundred and fifty six megabyte RAM chip for about a dollar a meg so, so it cost the memory has has decreased dramatically, and that was probably about fifteen
years ago. So you know, when we get to the point where, uh we're talking about exitbytes of memory, it'll probably be you know, yeah, it'll be a while, but you know, memory will probably be so inexpense, at least at that point by the recording of this podcast. So it be so funny if this podcast went live and I'm like, hey, did you get your out of teen xavitem, because I've got mine. You have to you have to bite in one ex sticks, so you've only got five slots.
Each stick is about five miles long. Yeah, so the yeah, I mean we've got that. That's another good point. Actually, it's the physical limitation of what we can build right now. Yeah, that's that's the thing is that these chips do take up physical space. So you know, for you to cram more memory, you can't just I mean, there's not like there's not like a switch that you click and you're like,
suddenly you've got more memory. You have to build those chips, and the chips do get larger as you need more memory. So because there's only a certain point at which the physical you can store information in the physical architecture of memory right now. Before that that we have advances going. You know, there are advances in that every single year. Just like Moore's law talks about the number of transistors on the chip, that also applies to things like memory.
But uh, you know, we're nowhere near being will have been an exit by a memory on a square inch chip unless it's unless it's significantly tall. So that that, I guess would be the last um of my suggestions. If you're looking at the difference between a thirty two and sixty four, if you can afford a sixty four bit system, you're ready to upgrade, you might as well go ahead and do it, because you'll be It's not like you, I mean you have to worry about the
one uh systems systems coming out next year. Yeah, that's you know, you can you could feel comfortable knowing that this is something that will last you some your future, proofing yourself to an extent, although again, as the components get more advanced, you may have to You know, if you're comfortable with the idea of popping open your computer and switching stuff out occasionally, then it shouldn't be a
big deal. And the operating systems we had for a while for the last few years have been sixty four bit capable and on basically everything Lennox, Mac, Windows, So um, you know it might be in your advantage to your advantage to upgrade. Yep. So I guess that wraps up this discussion. Hey guess what what this episode is is
gonna come in under thirty minutes. Really, it's like the first one in Ages, right, But it was a nice simple topic to tackle, and it was good for us to kind of get into that whole architecture thing because I think a lot of people are kind of confused by this. And again, when you hear numbers, you immediately think the bigger number is automatically better in all cases, and it's not always. That's not always the case. It's also interesting that it sounds complex, but it's remarkably simple
really when you get down to it. Yeah, once you get it, once you start thinking about those buildings. Yeah. Alright, Well we're gonna wrap this up. If you guys have any topics you would like us to tackle on future episodes, you can let us know via email. Our addresses tech Stuff at how stuff Works dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter are handled. There is tech stuff H. S W and Chris and I will talk to you again really O. Be sure to check
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