Re:macOS Catalina
by gpderetta on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @06:20AM
(#21190583)
X32 is dead exactly because, where 64bit is not needed, x86-32 is perfectly fine. I.e. the only practical reason not to go 64 is backward compatibility.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Indeed. X32 is beneficial for an application that
- Never needs more than 4 GB RAM (because it's not worth the usability downsides from having two binaries and letting the user choose which to use, just for a small performance boost)
- Is performance critical
- Performance is bound by memory and/or cache bandwidth
- A large share of the program memory usage is due to pointers
The intersection of all the above is just vanishingly small in reality. X32 was never more than a gimmick to score a few extra points in SPECcpu. And thus people rightfully ignored it.