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Athlon 64 and AMD's 64-bit technology
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| Mon Apr 19, 2004 | 10:23P| PermaLink |
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64-bit… Sounds magical doesn't it? Full of the promise of faster and more powerful computing. After all, 64 is two times 32, so there has got to be a performance increase right?
Well, yes and no. When we refer to 32-bit or 64-bit processors, what we are talking about is primarily the size of the registers, tiny, high-speed memory areas built right into the chip itself, closer even than the level 1 cache memory.
Both values must be stored in separate registers until the adding operation can be performed, at which point the resulting value of 5 is deposited in a third register for transfer out. Any data to be processed must at some point end up in a register, therefore the number and size of the registers helps to determine the overall performance of the processor.
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FULL STORY @
PCSTATS
(http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1466)
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