On 15 March 2011 07:36, Leon Rosenberg <rosenberg.l...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So a 64bit cpu has a 32bit mode, or how would a 32bit OS shrink the > transmit size? I mean the registers stay the same? Frequently, the bottleneck with realistic loads is access to main memory (or, not quite equivalently, on-die cache size). Assuming you have some locality of reference (adjacent instructions tend to be executed together, adjacent data items tend to be used together) then transferring 128 bits from main memory to cache is somewhat more likely to get you more useful bits of data in 4x32 bit items than in 2x64 bit items. - Peter
