Re: 64bit vs. 32bit

On Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:56:36 -0600, dbrooke wrote: >I am interested in hearing opinions about if there >are reasons to stay with a 32bit php/apache if there >is 64bit options available. What are the pros/cons >in running in the different architectures? If you need to run some 32-bit stuff, you'll have multiple copies of some libraries (one each for 32-bit and 64-bit). But hard drive space is cheap these days. You'll also use a little more RAM due to pointer and integer sizes. However, Linux will be able to address more RAM on a >3GB system. One restriction I know (knew?) of is that you can't run DOS programs under Wine on 64-bit, but then... why? Not much of a restriction here, at least. Conversely, the Wine people are working on 64-bit support in Wine. There have been drivers for some hardware that have not been available for 64-bit, and that may still be true. I remember that early cuts of madwifi for Atheros AR242x wifi were only available for 32-bit for quite a while (now resolved). If you have hardware that requires special drivers, check that 64-bit drivers are available. PHP specific (at last ;) that comes to mind is that time_t on 64-bit solves the Year 2038 problem, so any date calculations you have in PHP will work past 2038. This includes forecasting 30+ years into the future, which will break in PHP on 32-bit unless you avoid time_t based functions like time() and stick with DateTime objects. -- Ross McKay, Toronto, NSW Australia "Let the laddie play wi the knife - he'll learn" - The Wee Book of Calvin