64-bit Development

The article "32-bit pointers in a 64-bit world" touches upon the live issue of efficient use of 32-bit pointers in 64-bit environment with the purpose of performance gain. The author describes the operation principles of 'sptr' function serving for data alignment, and also peculiarities and limitations of its use. The article contains many clear and detailed examples of code to illustrate the mechanisms of encoding 64-bit pointers in 32-bits.

In the world of rapidly developing programming technologies it is important for all software developers to decide what standard and programming model to choose as universal to save time and money. The Open Group argues that LP64 programming model be the best solution for 64-bit programming. This conclusion is drawn from the results of analysis and comparison of ILP64 and LP64 models against several evaluation criteria, each being thoroughly commented and explained. Among these the authors list portability, interoperability with 32-bit environments, standards conformance, performance effects and transition costs.

In his brief blog-note the author dwells upon an idea to report various issues of 64-bit programming for a wide public. As we can see, this idea resulted in a kind of weekly e-magazine "64-bit Insider" providing interesting information on everything connected with 64-bit programming. The main plus of these publications is their easy-to-digest language so that even developers new to program migration and 64-bit software development could benefit from these materials.

The article "64-bit ODBC" provides detailed information on using 64-bit ODBC on 64-bit Linux, Unix and Windows platforms. Thanks to thorough introduction into the sphere of 64-bit and clear description of the basic principles of 64-bit technology and its advantages over 32-bit one, this paper can serve as a good manual for every user who wants to know how to manage 64-bit ODBC. The authors give detailed instructions on using various ODBC drivers on 64-bit Linux, Unix and Windows platforms illustrating them with good examples. Besides, the paper contains the FAQ section covering the most urgent issues and questions of using 64-bit ODBC.

Despite its recent appearance AMD64 platform provides a great amount of various tools for Linux. The article "A Linux Toolbox for AMD64 Developers" briefly reviews a set of Linux compilers and debuggers for AMD64 platform by different companies and describes their specific features and abilities. The article is also supplied with screenshots of some of the tools.

In his article, Allan McNaughton touches upon issues of interoperability between 32- and 64-bit processes in mixed-mode applications that serve as one of the way to bridge the gap between 32-bits and 64-bits. The author pays special attention to WOW64 and describes its working principle and gives a typical example of interoperability problem caused by mixed use of 64-bit pointers and shared memory.

Long collaboration between Linux and Intel processors makes it possible to port Linux-applications to the 64-bit Intel Itanium processor nearly painlessly. The article focuses on each step of this process and gives a lot of guidelines concerning various aspects of the port: use of commands, data types, avoiding packing, padding and alignment issues etc. Each guideline is illustrated by code examples.

Would you like to see a one-stop shop providing everything you need for 64-bit development? There is such a place - AMD Developer Central. With the help of Allan McNaughton you'll learn about the advantages of this source and a great variety of services and tools provided by it. For example, very good news for many developers is that such popular tools as AMD CodeAnalyst, AMD Core Math Library and AMD SimNow used for increasing performance, writing low-level code and other purposes are now free to obtain. And there are many other spheres you can benefit in from AMD Developer Central.

In this article Anderson Bailey explains how 64-bit mode enables acceleration of arithmetic and consequently performance of math-intensive applications. He briefly describes the principles and purposes of the three types of arithmetic provided by 32-bit mode (GPRs, x87 registers and SIMD registers) and analyzes the mechanisms of improving their performance in 64-bit mode provided by AMD64 architecture. The author also makes some conclusions about the spheres of software development that will especially benefit from this improvement.