What is the difference between a 32-bit operating system and a 64-bit operating system?

Source: Internet
Author: User

Labels: I/o OS use data on application window design and installation

 

Difference 1: the original design intention is different. The 64-bit operating system is designed to meet the requirements of mechanical design and analysis, 3D animation, video editing and creation, as well as customer requirements that require a large amount of memory and floating point performance in scientific computing and high-performance computing applications. In other words, they are the operating platforms for high-tech personnel to use special software in this industry. The 32-bit operating system is designed for common users.

Difference 2: different configurations are required. The 64-bit operating system can only be installed on 64-bit computers (the CPU must be 64-bit ). At the same time, 64-bit common software must be installed to achieve the best performance of 64-bit (x64. A 32-bit operating system can be installed on a 32-bit (32-bit CPU) or 64-bit (64-bit CPU) computer. Of course, the 32-bit operating system is installed on a 64-bit computer, and its hardware is like a "big Mara car": the 64-Bit performance will be greatly reduced.

Difference 3: The computing speed is different. The data width of 64-bit cpu gprs (general-purpose registers) is 64-bit, And the 64-bit instruction set can run 64-bit data instructions, that is to say, the processor can extract 64-bit data at a time (only two instructions are required to extract 8 bytes of data at a time), which is 32-bit (four instructions are required to extract 4 bytes of data at a time) the performance is doubled in theory.

Difference 4: The addressing capability is different. The advantage of a 64-bit processor lies in the system's memory control. Because the address uses a special integer, An ALU (Arithmetic Logic calculator) and register can process larger integers, that is, larger addresses. For example, Windows Vista x64 Edition supports up to 128 GB of memory and up to 16 TB of virtual memory, while 32-bit CPU and operating system support up to 4 GB of memory.

Difference 5: Software popularization is different. Currently, 64-bit commonly used software is much less than 32-bit commonly used software. The principle is simple: there are fewer users using 64-bit operating systems. Therefore, software developers must consider the "input-output ratio" and invest limited funds in software for more users. This is also an important reason for the relatively high price of 64-bit software (the cost is shared in a small amount of sales ).

Currently, all CPUs support 64-bit

What is the difference between a 32-bit operating system and a 64-bit operating system?

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