Snow Leopard's 64-bit aspirations

Devin Coldewey

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. → Learn More

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

If the last time you talked about how many bits something had was when you got a Super Nintendo, you’re probably as puzzled as I once was about the whole shift to 64-bit computing. Isn’t that the computing power of a Jaguar, not a Snow Leopard? No, silly goose. It’s very technical and I don’t pretend to understand it all the way, but essentially the 32-bit architecture that has been in place for years in x86es limits the maximum amount of RAM you can have, and its effectiveness.

64-bit architectures are available but not widely taken advantage of, and Apple aims to change that somewhat with Snow Leopard.

Read more
at Apple Insider, and keep an eye on it because there are two more installations of the extended article to come.

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