plans for 64bit support

[Jochen Küpper]

Hi Everybody,

On 11.12.2007, at 12:23, Ryan Schmidt wrote:

[...]

I totally agree with Ryan's argumentation on avoiding to many  
distinct lines of binaries and would suggest the people that are  
interested in 64 bit support or willing to help, extend +universal to  
include 32 bit and 64 bit binaries for PPC and Intel, all at once.

[...]

> if indeed 64-bit binaries are useful to have


Well, I have been running numerical simulations on 64 bit machines/ 
OSs already for more than ten years (starting with DEC AlphaStations  
at the time) because they run considerably faster on the 64 bit  
architecture or wouldn't run on 32 bit at ll (for memory constraints).

I have not yet done that on Mac OS X but currently use 64-bit  
variants of Linux, but I do see the use and actual need for 64 bit  
support on Mac OS X. Especially for some of the nice numerics tools  
in MacPorts!

Therefore, I think we should strongly consider to support 64 bit in  
some way.
See above for my standpoint on Ryan's email.


As a side-node: I wonder when we finally get rid of 32 bit and,  
moreover, when we get 128 bit floating point hardware back (Mr Cray,  
are you still around;)

Greetings,
Jochen
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