From: Caleb Clausen <vikkous@...>
Date: 2010-05-20T02:19:29+09:00
Subject: Re: 64 bit ruby interpreter

On 5/19/10, Michal Suchanek <hramrach@centrum.cz> wrote:
> Also you will notice that 64bit systems can do integer arithmetics on
> larger range of numbers.
>
> If you did lots of integer calculations with numbers in the range
> 1073741824-2305843009213693952 you would notice a speed improvement I
> guess because fixnums are much faster than bignums.
>
> You would likely not notice a difference unless you need lots of
> memory or you do lots of integer math in the range which requires
> 30-62 bits to represent.

Integer math on even larger integers should be roughly twice as fast too.

You should also notice that your processes now use somewhat more
memory, principally because all pointers are now twice as large.

Also, most things (besides large integer math) will be a little bit
slower; many memory operations are now performed on words that are
twice as large and it takes twice as long to move the data in and out
of memory.