On 01/07/2019 07:05, Folderol wrote:
> On Sun, 30 Jun 2019 21:11:27 +0100
> The Natural Philosopher  wrote:
>
>> On 30/06/2019 21:02, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>>> The Natural Philosopher  writes:
>>>
>>>> On 30/06/2019 00:32, A. Dumas wrote:
>>>>> The work involved to maintain two concurrent releases (with a lot of
>>>>> customisations) is their main reason apparently, yes, while the vast
>>>>> majority of the install base (the Pis out there) isn't 64 bit compatible.
>>>>> But their main software man also keeps saying: give me one good reason
why
>>>>> 64 bit is better than 32. See their blog on the new Buster release. Well,
>>>>> it gets a bit embarrassing with lost optimisations when the current chip
is
>>>>> armv8, for crying out loud. He says it doesn't make a difference but I
>>>>> wonder.
>>>>
>>>> Wasn't the drive to 64 bit more about accessing more RAM?
>>>
>>> More address space. CPUs with only 32-bit logical addressing can still
>>> access more than 4GB physical RAM, but each process is still stuck in
>>> 4GB (often less in practice).
>>
>> I remember coding a 6809 with 256K of ROM and 16k of RAM. In assembler.
>> Page switching YUK!
>>
>>
>> That’s a problem both for certain lagre
>>> applications, and for security improvements like ASLR.
>>>
>>> 64-bit GPRs are handy for some applications but rarely essential.
>>>
>>> For both Intel and ARM the 64-bit instruction sets double the number of
>>> architectural GPRs.
>>
>> Ground penetrating radars?
>>
>> Particularly on Intel where the 32-bit situation is
>>> pretty poor, that’s a big improvement for anyone writing in assembler.
>>>
>>
>> Yebbut thats not an itrinsic feature of 64 bit acrhitectures.
>>
>> Andf compilers *know* about that so its not JUST in assembler
>>
>>
>> Anyway I think the opinion set is converging on the fact that more RAM
>> is more important than a 64 bit distro
>
> The difference is not trivial if you are doing complex and high resolution
> video and/or audio generation and processing. You are likely to be using
> long ints and doubles in tight loops - and I'm not talking about just playing
> MP3s.
>

But who uses a Pi for that?

> On top of this I think there are extra features in the BCM2711 that the Pi
> 4 software doesn't use in order to maintain compatibility.
>
> I don't buy the argument about confusing newbies with different OS versions -
> especially when these users are most likely to get the thing as a complete
> package
>

I certainly did not.

>


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