[OpenIndiana-discuss] oracle removes 32bit x86 cpu support for solaris 11 will OI do same?

[Dmitry Kozhinov]

The main difference is (in)ability to use large amount of RAM.

32-bit systems use 32-bit pointers, and maximum value of unsigned 32-bit integer is 2^32,
or 4Gb. In practice many 32-bit OSes are able to address only 2Gb of RAM.

64-bit pointers can address much more RAM (no hardware has reached 2^64 RAM limit yet).

Nowadays even laptops may have 4 or 8 Gb of RAM, not to mention servers,
which should have much more. So, 32-bit OS is a past day OS, for legacy hardware only.

Unfortunately not everyone can afford a new hardware.
My web server has 1 GB RAM and 32-bit processor :(
Happily running OSol b134 :)

Regards,
Dmitry.

>  While we are talking about 32 | 64 bit processes;
>  Which one is better?
>  Faster?
>  More efficient?