When selecting an operating system, there are different types of 64-bit and 32-bit systems. How do I choose a 64-bit or 32-bit operating system? Let's first understand the significant differences between 32-bit systems and 64-bit systems. Mainly reflected in the system performance, storage management, software compatibility and other aspects, the following is a detailed comparison of the two systems.
In terms of memory support, the maximum memory limit for 32-bit systems generally supports a maximum memory of 4GB. The 32-bit system uses the 32-bit address space, the address space size is 2^32, in practical applications, the system also needs to reserve a part of the memory for hardware devices, so the actual available memory will be less than 4GB, such as Windows 32-bit system generally can only use 3.2GB or 3.5GB memory.
The 64GB maximum memory available address 64-bit address space, theoretically up to 2^64 bytes of memory, the actual support on the number of memory range of 16GB- TB range. Therefore, it can be seen that the memory 64 provides a large capacity memory for the system, which is very suitable for data application scenarios, such as database servers and high-performance computing.
From the performance point of view, the 32-bit system has a small number of general registers and a relatively simple instruction set, but for complex tasks that require multiple instructions to complete, performance may be affected. 64-bit systems have more general registers, which can reduce the number of memory accesses and improve computing efficiency. For example, the x86-64 architecture has 16 general purpose registers, but the x86 architecture has only 8. 64-bit systems can support rich instruction sets such as AVX, AVX2, etc. It is beneficial to improve floating-point arithmetic and vector arithmetic performance.
In terms of software compatibility, 32-bit systems only allow 32-bit applications to run, if you want to run 64-bit applications, you need to upgrade the system first. 32-bit systems require 32-bit drivers, and some hardware devices may not have 32-bit drivers affecting compatibility issues. While 64-bit systems can run both 32-bit and 64-bit applications, most 64-bit systems provide a compatibility layer that seamlessly runs 32-bit applications. 64-bit systems require 64-bit drivers, most modern hardware devices provide 64-bit drivers, some older hardware may not have 64-bit drivers, but this is rare.
In 32-bit systems, the US process space is displayed as 2GB, and the number of threads created by each process is less than 2,000, while the address space of each process in 64-bit systems can reach 10TB, which can handle larger data sets. The number of threads that can be created per process is also increasing, making it suitable for highly concurrent applications.
In terms of security, 32-bit systems support basic security mechanisms, such as DEP and ASLR, and the kernel protection mechanism is relatively simple. 64-bit systems support strong security mechanisms such as DEP, ASLR, CFG, and more. The kernel protection mechanism is more powerful to better defend against malicious attacks.
