The biggest advantage of the 64-bit engine is that 64bit supports a much
larger memory addressability. This can be an advantage if you need to
increase your memory footprint. There can be a performance advantage in
doing that because you can increase the inmemory buffers and increase your
dictionary cache to load all tables. (See previous thread)
However, unless you are ready to increase the physical memory in you system,
this will not be an advantage. It does little good to increase the
addressable memory space if it resides on the swap/paging file.
Another thing to understand. The 64-bit versions WILL require more memory
to run even if you do not configure for an increase. Why? Well pointers in
a 64-bit system are twice as large as in a 32-bit system. This is somthing
that a lot of folks forget about and are suprised with. So if you plan on
moving to a 64-bit system and are currently a bit tight on memory, be
prepared to make a quick trip to Fry's (or your favorite computer supplier)
for some more memory. To my way of thinking, this is a rather small price
to pay for advantages of increased addressability.
Of course, eventually everything will be 64-bit only. I suspect that the
days of the 32-bit standard are starting to wane a bit, just as the 16-bit
standard (and 8-bit) did a few years ago. (Anyone remember the 8086
days???)
> Is it worth it upgrading Informix from a 32-bits platform to a 64-bits
> one? I am migrating my Informix version 7.31 to another server, which is
> 64 bits, and I was wondering if I would have any significant performance
> improvement on doing it.
> - Paty
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.