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Full Discussion: 32bit vs 64bit
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers 32bit vs 64bit Post 25277 by Marc Rochkind on Friday 26th of July 2002 11:07:26 PM
Old 07-27-2002
All OSes can can process 32-bit and 64-bit numbers (actually, even longer ones). And, if the hardware supports, say, 64-bit integers natively, then it is possible for a compiler to support those instructions on any OS.

But, what one usually means by a "64-bit OS" is that the OS itself exploits the newer features of a 64-bit processor. That is, if native data moves are in 64-bit chunks, then the OS moves data that way. If a huge amount of memory can be addressed, then the OS can use it. If device drivers can be faster because of higher bandwidth, then the OS has such drivers. And so on.

But, even on such an OS, whether applications use the "64-bit features" is entirely up to the design of the program and/or the compiler that's generating the code.
Marc Rochkind
 

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LEARN ABOUT CENTOS

platform::shell

platform::shell(n)					       Tcl Bundled Packages						platform::shell(n)

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

NAME

       platform::shell - System identification support code and utilities

SYNOPSIS

       package require platform::shell ?1.1.4?

       platform::shell::generic shell
       platform::shell::identify shell
       platform::shell::platform shell
_________________________________________________________________

DESCRIPTION

       The platform::shell package provides several utility commands useful for the identification of the architecture of a specific Tcl shell.

       This  package  allows the identification of the architecture of a specific Tcl shell different from the shell running the package. The only
       requirement is that the other shell (identified by its path), is actually executable on the current machine.

       While for most platform this means that the architecture of the interrogated shell is identical to the architecture of  the  running  shell
       this  is  not generally true. A counter example are all platforms which have 32 and 64 bit variants and where a 64bit system is able to run
       32bit code. For these running and interrogated shell may have different 32/64 bit settings and thus different identifiers.

       For applications like a code repository it is important to identify the architecture of the shell which will  actually  run  the  installed
       packages, versus the architecture of the shell running the repository software.

COMMANDS

       platform::shell::identify shell
	      This command does the same identification as platform::identify, for the specified Tcl shell, in contrast to the running shell.

       platform::shell::generic shell
	      This command does the same identification as platform::generic, for the specified Tcl shell, in contrast to the running shell.

       platform::shell::platform shell
	      This command returns the contents of tcl_platform(platform) for the specified Tcl shell.

KEYWORDS

       operating system, cpu architecture, platform, architecture

platform::shell 						       1.1.4							platform::shell(n)
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