On Wed, 2007-06-20 at 22:59 +0400, Bulat Ziganshin wrote:
generally speaking, people want to use 64-bit code in order to work with much larger data space, overall speed may be better than using 32-bit version with 2gb limit
With x86_64, 64 bit programs are usually faster than 32 bit ones even for small data, probably because despite the extra stack space etc that is required for double sized pointers, there are also more registers. There may also be a penalty for 32 bit code in other parts of the processing pipeline, eg segmentation (which is not available for 64 bit code). IMHO the main use of 32 bit machines now is embedded applications, for example mobile phones. Desktops are all switching to 64 bit: Amd64 dual core PC-like machines are now very cheap: a friend just bought one for $A500 .. at that kind of price there's no reason to even think about buying a 32 bit desktop box. Portables will follow quickly. Systems like GHC really need to target the major boxes that will be in use in 3 years, not what we have now. I wouldn't drop 32 bit support -- there's LOTS of money in mobile phones, and mass production provides money to pay for more secure software such as use of more advanced languages like Haskell where one is more confident of correctness than an equivalent C program. Still .. the main thrust has to be desktops, because desktops are what developers use, and before a PL can be adopted in embedded systems or servers you need a community of programmers so management knows it can replace those hit by buses... -- John Skaller <skaller at users dot sf dot net> Felix, successor to C++: http://felix.sf.net