Re: Friday facts #158 - The end of the 32 bit era
Posted: Mon Oct 03, 2016 9:22 am
I support your discontinuation of 32bit version. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one percent! Or something like that
www.factorio.com
https://forums.factorio.com/
It's extremely unlikely that either of those would come to fruition in foreseeable future. We'll probably have a completely new architecture with radically different concepts for computing and memory before moving x86 to >64bits.bobingabout wrote:128bit is the future, and 256bit after that.
Yes. Intel has server CPUs with 22 physical/44 logical cores and you can have two of them in same case. For special cases they also offer "massively parallel CPUs" with 72 physical/288 logical cores per chip.bobingabout wrote:You can have systems with up to 24 physical processing cores from what I understand
True, people aren't doing all that much multithreaded programming.bobingabout wrote:Unfortunately, even though people have been doing it for 10 years or so, multithreaded programming still needs some encouragement.
No, not really. At least not more than going from SSE2 to AVX-256 did and, just as with parallel processing, going to wider SIMD units won't really benefit in most situations.bobingabout wrote:128bit and 256bit systems are basically just another way to parallel things up.
Not really. Going to 64bit architecture in itself didn't improve parallel computations one bit.bobingabout wrote:I'm sure 64bit did that sort of thing too
True, goin 64bit allowed for "native" computations on 64bit integers. "Problem" is, before 64bit architecture you could do same sort of calculations in MMX registers and vast majority of calculations aren't really using 64bit ints in first place so benefits are questionable at best.bobingabout wrote:but I know a lot of it from the programming perspective was basically just allowing you to work with bigger numbers.
Standards say it's int64_t or uint64_t depending if you want signed or unsigned integer.bobingabout wrote:Having said that though, I'm still unsure of the proper universal method of declaring a 64bit variable in C/C++
You confuse compilers with operating systemsbobingabout wrote:Last time I looked into it about 3 years ago, windows did one thing, while Linux did something else, and some versions of Linux defaulted to 64bit when specifying an int.
Yep.. since it's actually an "Athlon II X2" so the "single core" is a dual core with one core disabled... besides that CPU isn't even that old... being AM2+/AM3hoho wrote:Masterfox wrote:[...]Not all Sempronsjjcf89 wrote:Apparently not all of the semprons where 64-bit..hoho wrote:Sempron 140 is a 64bit CPU:Masterfox wrote:Actually, this is not true. My PC still has a 32-bit processor, an AMD Sempron 140 and still is able to play factorio with bobs mods. So that is really just not true.
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K10/AMD-S ... OX%29.html
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/how-to-i ... pron-cpus/
Yes all Sempron 140's
Well... int should be 32bit, even on 64bit platforms, even on GNU/Linux by now. But long means 64bit on GNU/Linux while it's still 32bit on Windows which requires long longbobingabout wrote:[...]
Having said that though, I'm still unsure of the proper universal method of declaring a 64bit variable in C/C++. Last time I looked into it about 3 years ago, windows did one thing, while Linux did something else, and some versions of Linux defaulted to 64bit when specifying an int. [...]
Except that in practice – at least in Factorio practice – there are subtle differences between the resulting 32-bit and 64-bit executables, which then lead to desyncs, which are fairly time-consuming to debug and fix.White-Tiger wrote:Supporting both 32bit and 64bit platforms is mostly hassle free, code just runs on both
I would like to know which ones...Oxyd wrote:[...]
Except that in practice – at least in Factorio practice – there are subtle differences [...]
Oh I certainly understand where you guys are coming from and as I said the switch to 64bit doesn't affect me but is a good thing (as far as I am concerned, biased because I'm already on 64bit obviously). I was also just pointing out that it could probably have been handled a little better and that you also have to understand the anger coming from people that may be stuck (for whatever reason) on 32bit machines. The original quote was just to show that "we can do whatever we want and you can do nothing" is not a great attitude nor is it one that is likely to go down well if someone were to make a complaint to their local consumer/trade group after being denied a refund for something that seems pretty fundamental.Klonan wrote:Balinor wrote:
Secondly, TOS don't really mean much at all what matters is consumer law and in some places you may be forced to offer a refund for things being different than at the time of sale, just fyi.
Well we have made things very clear, on our site we promise you will have access to all future factorio updates for free,
However we make no promise of the game content, and it would be impossible to develop any software if we refunded our supporters for every decision they didn't like.
In the end we aren't trying to screw over our 32 bit players,
It is just better for the game development and the rest of the community for the sacrifice to be made,
And with any change to the game, some people won't like it of course,
But we hope we can keep the communities trust to do what is best for the game
AMD has been using those sockets for a long time now so not really a valid thing to say.White-Tiger wrote:Yep.. since it's actually an "Athlon II X2" so the "single core" is a dual core with one core disabled... besides that CPU isn't even that old... being AM2+/AM3
I don't see any harm in dropping 32-bit support, but still no reason for being a d***. You're not eletronic arts (hurray), don't try to be.HanziQ wrote:I guess we could also drop 64bit support in 0.15.FaceEater21 wrote:And that's why you don't buy games in EA, Devs like to change things and fuck you up.
Hope we get 1.0 before they stop supporting 64 bits
Of course that would mean no one would be able to play the game, but we have a right to do that, don't we? Everyone agreed to the Terms of Service which clearly state the cases in which you're eligible for a refund and that we can change anything at any time just because we feel like it.
Yes, in 64bit pointers have twice the size and so do some int's you've not declared specifically as 32bits. In reality, that's just a few percentages of more memory used. As long as you aren't completely out of RAM, you'll likely gain more performance from 64bits thanks to having more general purpose registers available for the code to run on.White-Tiger wrote:But even though most CPU's (>99%) might be 64bit by now, there's still a valid reason why one would stick to 32bit.. that is if the system got less than 4 GB of memory. 64bit will use up more of your free memory... it's a fact. And being <4GB means you're already pretty low on it.
No they don't. We use floating point numbers (float and double) all over the codebase without desync issues. In fact we have a multitude of tests that ensure they are in fact stable across platforms and CPUs.White-Tiger wrote:The related changelog mentioned floating point arithmetic which can't be used anyway... since floating points have different implementations even on the same platform and from the same CPU vendor.
Let's assume there are 2500 more 32-bit sales, and they are worth $10 profit each. $25000 is a year's salary for a developer in Czech Republic. It might take a year of developer time to fix every 32-bit bug. (If you don't fix them all, you will get complaints and negative publicity). And you end up with zero profit.Nova wrote:I don't like the idea to remove 32 bit support. Yes, not much people use it, but think another way about it: When only 1% of users use 32 bit systems, that are still 5000 people.
CobraA1 wrote:I'm pretty sure most of the remaining 32 bit holdouts are likely because of Windows XP (which had a 64 bit version, but it was poorly supported so most people stuck to 32 bit)
Couldn't resist chiming in on this... I actually maintain one machine running XP 64bit. I say "maintain" loosely, because as others have pointed out, updates from MS stopped long ago. It has relatively modern hardware... Core i7-2600K, 8GB RAM, etc. The biggest problem I had was needing to slipstream SATA drivers into the installer. A lot of the issues people had getting software running on xp64 back in the day were because having a 64-bit OS was not mainstream. When Windows 7 came out, that all changed, and I have had surprisingly few problems with it over the years. That IS starting to change, however, as more software requires things only present in Windows 7. The day I retire this installation is probably not too far in the future.PacifyerGrey wrote:As to migrating from Windows XP 32bit to 64bit - I would strongly discourage this as the last never worked fine. If your hardware is that bad you should not aim for playing new games. Windows XP was discontinued in 2013 for a reason so please don't expect anyone to continue supporting it when Microsoft itself stopped it.