Computers with 64 bit processors are becoming popular, at least
in enterprise circles. Also the X64 version of Windows Vista is
more popular than Windows XP 64 bit edition. 2 Types of 64 bit
architecture Yes, unlike 32 bit (aka X32) there are 2 64 bit
architectures: - AMD's X64 ; also known as X32-64 & AMD64 -
Intel's IA-64; also known as Itanium The subject of this post is
AMD's 64 bit chip, which is commonly referred to as X64 So,
whats the difference ? The X64 architecture is a super set of
X32 architecture : - 64 bit versions of the the existing 32 bit
registers - So X32's 32 bit registers EAX, EBX, ECX etc becomes
64 bit RAX, RBX, RCX etc in X64 - 8 new 64 bit general purpose
registers (R8, R9...R15) - 8 new 128 bit XMM registers To know
more about the architecture goto http://www.amd.com/us-
en/Processors/DevelopWithAMD/0,,30_2252_875_7044,00.html And how
is programing different ? A lot has been written about porting
existing 32 bit code to 64 bit. A lot of these deals with change
in sizeof pointers (fro