Of course, I might as well wait for a 64-bit Windows XP to be released first ;)

I was all excited the day I got my Athlon64, and installed the Microsoft Beta of XP 64 -- and wasted about 3 hours of my evening. Why? Most things were running ok --

EXCEPT it didn't recognize my Creative Labs Audigy card -- not exactly a 3rd rate (or unpopular) sound card.

I'm back to regular 32-bit XP. Hoping for the day 64-bit will take off enough to get some good drivers for common hardware.

What that day dawns, however, can I expect a 64-bit Boinc as well?

Matthew

---

<img src=\"http://boinc.mundayweb.com/one/stats.php?userID=2118&prj=4\">

Ahhh! A 64 version. Of such things are dreams made!

I DO hope that you're not holding your breath while you wait. It could be next year for all we know.
When 64 bit machines are common household items, it may be a better time to hope.

A 64 bit version wouldn't benefit the other dc projects a lot, as they have quite a short run time already.
And BOINC isn't CPDN. This projects one programmer has quite enough to do already, without recreating new
versions of all current work.

Sorry to be a wet blanket, but that's how it is.

Les

Part of a tripple post.
The server accepts the message and then won't let ME back.
I'll stay away for a few months to see if things improve.

Les

Deleted

Les

There are already quite a bunch of people waiting for 64-bit.
Win XP 64-bit is annouced to April...being available to market as i have been told by M$. Albeit, none info about commond 64-bit aplication like Photoshop etc... or the guy i have been talking to from Adobe knew nothing.
As some popular HW like modern VGAs etc. already got beta version of their drivers, i'm expecting themn to be released soon after Win 64-bit hit the market.

AMD64 is quite cheap, Intel CPUS with EM64T are not...but at least are compatible with Win 64-bit or Linux 64-bit...as i have recently tested.

I got the feeling that only 64-bit apps are missing (when both CPUs and OS/Drivers are soon to be available): starting from commond apps like Photoshop, Acrobat, 3D rendering apps and...not on the last place, clients for BOINC.
Apparently, you will hardly see any ETA on those and it may take a while as Les pointed out...

EDIT: i think there already is/was 64-bit complilation BOINC platform....

---

<i>phpBB forum for CPDN, all are </i><a href="http://www.climateprediction.net/board">invited</a>

Tell me if I'm wrong. But 64bit windows only brings an advantage if you use more than 4GB of memory cause of 32bit can't address to memory up the 4BG frontier. So you may only see performance gains if you're running appilcations with huge memory needs so that the system has to permanently use paging files.

&gt; Tell me if I'm wrong. But 64bit windows only brings an advantage if you use more than 4GB of memory cause of 32bit can't address to memory up the 4BG frontier. So you may only see performance gains if you're running appilcations with huge memory needs so that the system has to permanently use paging files.

You are right about benefit of larger amounts of memory (and swapfile etc.) to be allocated in Win 64-bit.
But using 64-bit general registers can boost performance as well. See for example this article, which is quite informative and has some performance tests as well.
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1665&amp;page=1

Note that it is about AMD64, not Intel EM64T. I expect AMD64 to do better on 64-bit but time will tell...

---

<i>phpBB forum for CPDN, all are </i><a href="http://www.climateprediction.net/board">invited</a>

Hi Honza,

thanks for this link. I didn't know about this extra registers and their capabilities to boost performance. Unfortunatly we'll have to wait till we can really experience this boost.

Since 64bit Linux has been around for a long time now, other People are waiting for much longer already ;)

But as with every change like that (e.g. like 16bit-32bit), it takes alot of time.
Compilers are way behind concerning using the already existing CPU Features to the full extend, let alone 64bit.

So far I switched only one of my Athlon64 Systems to 64bit Linux and wait for Software to come along at its pace.

But once that thing rolls, I can imagine some really nice performance boosts coming along with it (a small 64bit spearhead of software developers managed to get upto 60% performance boost, depending on the Program used; POVray64 for example gets quite a blast out of 64bit)

PS.
Intel EM64T is a licensed clone of AMD64, minus a few changes intel apparently didn't catch from AMD's errata sheets (they didn't properly implement one or two of the original AMD64 features for some reason, which caused WinXP-64 development some Problems and additional delays).

---

Scientific Network : 44800 MHz - 77824 MB - 1970 GB

&gt; PS.
&gt; Intel EM64T is a licensed clone of AMD64, minus a few changes intel apparently didn't catch from AMD's errata sheets (they didn't properly implement one or two of the original AMD64 features for some reason, which caused WinXP-64 development some Problems and additional delays).

Do you have any source link to this..'cause i'm really interested to know more.

---

<i>phpBB forum for CPDN, all are </i><a href="http://www.climateprediction.net/board">invited</a>

&gt; Do you have any source link to this..'cause i'm really interested to know
&gt; more.

Only did a quicky search, but google helps ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EM64T
http://hardware.earthweb.com/chips/article.php/3484611

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116804,00.asp

---

Scientific Network : 44800 MHz - 77824 MB - 1970 GB

&gt; &gt; Do you have any source link to this..'cause i'm really interested to know more.
&gt;
&gt; Only did a quicky search, but google helps ;)

Thanks for the links.
Perhaps i wasn't clear in what i'm iterested in. I know both CPUs are compatible on SW level, that Itaniums showed itself as a dead end, what general 64-bits registers offer as it have been mentioned in many articles over and over.
More interesting part are speculations that Intel with it's Netburst architecture wasn't quite ready for 64-bit extension so that AMD64 may gain more from 64-bit (e.g. doing better on 64-bit). In some cases - Intel Presshots with EM64T running in 64-bit may provide even worse performance than in 32-bit.
In other words, i was interested in technology part or real sw performance rathen than in marketing talks, sw compatability and user's comfort.

---

<i>phpBB forum for CPDN, all are </i><a href="http://www.climateprediction.net/board">invited</a>

&gt; More interesting part are speculations that Intel with it's Netburst
&gt; architecture wasn't quite ready for 64-bit extension so that AMD64 may gain
&gt; more from 64-bit (e.g. doing better on 64-bit). In some cases - Intel
&gt; Presshots with EM64T running in 64-bit may provide even worse performance than
&gt; in 32-bit.
&gt; In other words, i was interested in technology part or real sw performance
&gt; rathen than in marketing talks, sw compatability and user's comfort.
&gt;


Hello Honza,

the German <a href="http://www.heise.de/ct">c't magazine</a> did some tests about 64bit vs. 32-bit performance. The result might be interesting for you.

They ran the <a href="http://www.spec.org">SPEC2000</a> benchmark suite under Windows XP 64-bit (Beta).
For compiling they used the Intel Compiler V8.1.
One result of their tests was, that under 64bit WXP 32bit binaries are as fast as under 32bit WXP (though they have to use a compatibility layer).

Here some results for SPECfp_base2000 (floating point, most interesting for cpdn I think):

Pentium 560j, with compiler option QxW (optimized for Willamette):
32bit 1550 vs. 64bit 1792 - gain 15.6 %

Pentium 560j, with option QxP (optimized for Presshot):
32bit 1704 vs. 64bit 1849 - gain 8.2 %

Athlon FX55, with option QxW (QxP doesn't run on this cpu):
32bit 1443 vs. 64bit 1632 - gain 13.1 %

The doubled number of registers will mainly be responsible for this gain.


Some results for SPECint_base2000 (integer):

The Pentium was approx. 4% slower when the binary was 64bit compared to a 32bit binary.
The Athlon showed the same performance both under 64bit and 32bit.

---

<a href="http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/64-bits/index.x?pg=1">A recent article by the TechReport guys on 64 vs. 32bit and Intel vs. AMD</a>

&gt; <a href="http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/64-bits/index.x?pg=1">A recent article by the TechReport guys on 64 vs. 32bit and Intel vs. AMD</a>

Thnaks for the link, geophi.
It's quite a good reading. I found this part relevant for CPDN as it is using Fortran compiler:
"The performance gains from having 16 GPRs available will vary depending on the complexity of your code. Compute-intensive applications with deeply nested loops, as in most Fortran codes, will experience higher levels of register pressure than simpler algorithms that follow a mostly linear execution path."

---

<i>phpBB forum for CPDN, all are </i><a href="http://www.climateprediction.net/board">invited</a>

I've had a AMD64 Mobile Athlon for a year now, it seems pretty good. But now I find out that there are dual core AMDs that are essentially 2 cpu's on a single cpu chip. That would be cool to have.
And the news that Intels 64 bit is a copy of AMDs? Hmm, sounds like they're taking after Microsoft, buying other companies ideas, screwing them up, and sticking the end user with buggy crap.
Wierd that I didn't get XP64 with my laptop, probably cuz it's a cheap emachine (or it wasn't/isn't out yet).

---

&gt; Wierd that I didn't get XP64 with my laptop, probably cuz it's a cheap
&gt; emachine (or it wasn't/isn't out yet).
&gt;
Well, you couldn't have got it, as you point out, it wasn't out yet. And yes, I'm sure that lots of A64 systems will still ship with 32 bit WinXP for lots of reasons, cost being one of them, drivers being another. At least for the short term, MS is marketing it for workstation type systems. However, as more and more drivers are rewritten, and more and more 64 bit capable systems are manufactured, that will change.