Actual benefits of amd64 over i386

[Peter Korsten]

João Carlos Mendes Luís wrote:

>     What about a 64 bit kernel, and mixed mode (32bit and 64bit)
> userland?  Solaris does this, and it sounds efficient, from the comments
> I've seen in this list.

Yeah well... I'm still to see significant performance benefits of 64 
bits applications over 32 bits ones on my Sun Blade 100 at work.

>     The bad part: Most (probably all) libraries would duplicated, and
> the kernel and compiler should be modified to understand this "feature".

True, but it's just a compiler flag, really, for the libraries. It works 
well enough in Solaris. The kernel is a different issue that I won't 
comment upon, mostly because I don't know much about it. :)

- Peter