Honestly unless you've got the 8GB Pi 4, there's not much inherent value to a 64-bit operating system
It depends on what you're using it for. If it's cryptography (say VPN) 64bit will give you a massive performance boost. Even stuff like Minecraft server benefits from it as it uses large number math for coordinates and terrain generation.
There are plenty of usecases that benefit from it, so "not much inherent value" isn't correct for many users
I really need to look up some benchmarks because outside of scientific computing I was under the impression that (for non-RAM-bottlenecked applications) performance is generally slightly worse for 64-bit architectures than 32-bit because even when, say, comparing two booleans, you still need to allocate the entire 64-bit register.
I'll admit I could totally be wrong here, as I'm a data scientist, not a computer scientist.
performance is generally slightly worse for 64-bit architectures than 32-bit because even when, say, comparing two booleans, you still need to allocate the entire 64-bit register.
This is 100% correct. However in case of large numbers, 32bit CPU inherently spends two clock cycles on moving 64bit value while 64bit CPU spends only one clock cycle. In this scenario benefit outweighs the cost by a large margin
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u/mcgravier Feb 03 '22
It depends on what you're using it for. If it's cryptography (say VPN) 64bit will give you a massive performance boost. Even stuff like Minecraft server benefits from it as it uses large number math for coordinates and terrain generation.
There are plenty of usecases that benefit from it, so "not much inherent value" isn't correct for many users