64-bit Development

In this brief blog-note, Raymond Chen touches upon the AMD64 architecture and gives some tips on working with its registers supplying them with code samples.

One more brief blog-note by Raymond Chen where he explains the reasons why Win64 team chose LLP64 data model, showing by an example the rationality of their choice.

The paper deals with issues a developer may encounter when porting a 32-bit application to the x64 processor, and includes several sections devoted to explaining reasons for porting, giving some facts to consider before porting, and describing the steps of porting an application to a 64-bit platform. The paper covers only the most common points and rather briefly but it can serve a good introduction to porting 32-bit C++ applications to the x64 platform for those who has just faced this problem.

One of the main disadvantages of 32-bit computing is the limit of 4GB of memory leading to reduced performance of resource-intensive applications. The paper explains how to increase available virtual memory for 32-bit applications under 64-bit Windows with the help of Microsoft's 4GT method as the first step of making 32-bit applications ready for the port to a 64-bit platform. The author describes the principle of this method and gives some guidelines on how to use it to get the best result. Also, there is an additional section explaining the principles of coexistence of 32-bit and 64-bit applications in 64-bit Windows. The paper contains illustrative schemes, tables and code samples.

In this note, the author explains how to set Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition to be able to compile applications for 64-bit Windows with its help. The note provides thorough instructions and tips on how to use the compiler's abilities to a full extent. As the author says, though the decision he offers can be rather dangerous, still it is worth applying.

In this note, Kevin Frei tells about the differences between calling conventions of x86 and x64 architectures. His aim is to provide the programmers with the most important information about basic features of x64 calling convention: registers used, structure alignment, stack unwinding, etc. The note is supplied with links to resources containing more detailed materials.