64 bit apps

[Pat Dooley]

This is a question I've wondered about for a long time. Why are so many commercial apps available in 32 bit versions only?
The only reason I can come up with is Return-On-Investment. 64 bit versions need programmers time and time is money. But is ROI the only reason? Or is something else going on?
In the case of PB/FF users, we don't have 64 bit versions because we can't. When we can, we will.
At work we use an app that costs the company $2800 annualy. You would think this software company would have a 64 bit version. I think it would help. Sqlitening runs like a Cheetah compared to their monstrosity. It's speed in fact is more like a jellyfish (the animal not the software). :-)

[Dan English]

I would think that the main reason is that it's just not necessary for most apps.

The primary advantage for 64-bit is ability to address larger memory spaces.  Aside from applications like MS Office or Adobe Photoshop (which could easily use huge amounts of memory), I'm not sure it's worth the time and effort, and money required for additional testing.

[Douglas McDonald]

I agree. The biggest advantage I'd guess is an app compiled for 64 bit CPU's is more efficient for the CPU and being able to address vast amounts of memory. For the app's 99% of us write I doubt there's a nano seconds worth of difference. Just seems such a waste to have a variable 64 bit in size to use it as a one bit flag but I thought the same thing about 32 bit longs also. It just takes it longer to process a byte than a dword (quad word). Your moving in 64 bit on the bus  anyway like it or not.

I mostly do micro-controller firmware programming where bytes still matter (there are still 4 bit MCU's around). WOW I can get 255 flags from that byte. So it blows me away that the smallest thing is 64 bits.

I suppose if you look at it in a sales / marketing way it must not make that much difference. If there was money to be made going 64 bit then you'd see a lot more of it. MUCH MORE

I'm guessing PB has a 64bit compiler in the works but whats the hurry? Other than "its a cool thing to have" and you can sell the app as "64 bit" does it really matter? The average person doesn't have the PC power to use it even with gigs of ram and tera byte HHD's. Most Companies don't other than 64bit CPU's as standard now.

Its hard enough to design a compiler to take advantage of 2-4-6, now 8-12, core CPU's. I think that is much more important and were the focus should be. They go hand in hand... can't have efficient multi core processing without 64bit processing. Its a DAMM BIG JOB, few companies have the recourses to do it. Lets see...Microsoft, Borland, Orical  ................

One last thought..........Do I want a 64bit program that takes 10's of MB in lib's (read .NET) just to work or will a good old 16bit 20k .dll blow it away.

On the other hand I may not know what I'm talking about and I'm 100% sure there are 1000's of good reasons to need 64 bit compilers that I couldn't begin to understand.

Just my thoughts and sorry for the long post.

Doug