Linked by Jordan Spencer Cunningham on Wed 7th Oct 2009 19:15 UTC, submitted by JayDee
Microsoft has been thinking about Windows 8 for a while now even through the production of Windows 7. Some information has been gathered by our friends over at Ars, and all of this said information points to possible 128-bit versions of Windows 8 and definite 128-bit versions of Windows 9. Update: Other technophiles better-versed than I in this whole 64/128-bit business pointed out that it must be for the filesystem (such as ZFS described in this article) rather than the processor and memory scheme.
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Member since:
2006-01-25
True, but in real world code more often than not the extra registers simply don't offer enough benefit to compensate for the slowdown caused by doubling the size of pointers... There are times where it helps A LOT of course, and it certainly doesn't hurt, but it isn't always effective. Besides, there is nothing magic about have 16 GPRs that makes it possible to use registers instead of the stack - you can use reg calling conventions with just 8 registers in 32-bit code as well - it just depends on how many parameters you are using, their types, and how many local variables you are defining. If your code has a lot of parameters or a lot of local variables then 16 GPRs will probably help, otherwise it will not have any effect or very little effect.