And you wonder why netbooks didn't last so long on the market before tablets killed them: If they didn't build inferior chips for their laptops, then maybe they would've been out a little while longer, at least until tablets were serious competition to them in the market like they are now....

damn

Originally posted by ddp:

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autolycus, i think it is a bit more involved then that as my 32bit intel dual core cpu won't let me install 64bit windows & i only have 2gigs of ram in that laptop. have come across that a few times.

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I don't understand. A 32-bit chip won't be able to run a 64-bit OS unless the chip is actually a '32'-bit, 64-bit compatible one; which is actually just a 64-bit chip. The RAM only affects the install by way of whether the OS needs more. The RAM is accessed by byte and 2^32 is 4294967296. That means 4294967296/(1024*1024*1024) = 4GB physically accessible. Depending on the OS, some of that is usually used for other stuff so you only get an actual 3GB 'available'. However, 64-bit means 18446744073709551616B or 17179869184GB or 17179869184/(1024*1024*1024) = 16 Exabytes. The limiting factor here is no-longer the addressing but the physical hardware.

The 64-bit processor itself is basically just a 32-bit processor with 64-bit registers and datapath. What that means is an instruction word is decoded as a 64-bit long instruction then the 64-bit long registers are read and written to using the result of the datapath that supports 64-bit long ints, floats, etc. Normally, since it's mostly just a 32-bit processor with double bandwidth they can handle 32b instructions and data.

In short, I have to agree with 'autolycus' because unless you want more RAM, you really don't need a 64-bit chip. I highly doubt someone really needs to try running a 64-bit program (that is usually highly processor and memory hungry) on a mobile Atom platform.

EDIT- wait, I think I see what you're saying. That goes back to the processor datapath though. A 64-bit OS is compiled to run on a 64-bit processor. You could install a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit processor but not vica-versa. It's like a commuter car and monster truck with a small and large garage.