A PC with 8 GB of RAM just seems better than one with 4 GB of RAM, right? And 32-bit PCs were limited to 4 GB of RAM. The amount of memory in a PC is one of those numbers. Selling to people who may not fully understand the platforms they’re buying means marketers have to push certain, easy-to-understand numbers. The second, arguably bigger, influence came from the way PC manufacturers marketed their PCs. Microsoft pushed 64-bit computing heavily to manufacturers and gave them better tools-and a longer lead time-for implementing 64-bit drivers. Two things turned the tide in the PC world.
All around it was a bumpy road for 64-bit adoption among home users. Windows supported 64-bit in Windows Vista but, again, it wasn’t widely adopted. macOS X didn’t fully support 64-bit for another five years with the release of OS X Leopard. The following year, OS X Panther and a handful of Linux distributions began supporting 64-bit CPUs in varying capacities.
It was not widely adopted, save for those willing to deal with extremely limited driver support and a lot of headaches. In 2001, Microsoft released Windows XP 64-bit edition.
The Nintendo 64 and the Playstation 2, both seen in the photo above, had 64-bit processors a full 5 years before consumer level 64-bit CPUs and accompanying operating systems even made an appearance on the public radar.Ĭonsumer confusion over what 64-bit means to them-and poor driver support from manufacturers-severely hampered the push towards 64-bit PCs throughout most of the 2000s. During that time, consumers were exposed to 64-bit systems, but most were completely unaware of it. 64-bit computing would remain the sole province of super computers and large servers for the next 15 or so years.
The first computer to utilize a 64-bit architecture was the Cray UNICOS in 1985, which sets a precedent for 64-bit super computers (the Cray 1 is seen in the center of the photo above). This may have seemed like an enormous amount of RAM when they were hashing out register sizes 40 years ago but it’s a rather inconvenient limit for modern computers.Īlthough it may seem like 64-bit computing is the new kid on the techno-wizardry block, it has actually been around for decades. A CPU with a 32-bit register, for example, has a ceiling of 2 32 addresses within the register and is thus limited to accessing 4GB of RAM. The more ample the space in the CPU’s register system, the more it can handle-especially in terms of using system memory efficiently. A 64-bit register can hold more data than a 32-bit register, which in turn holds more than 16-bit and 8-bit registers. The bit designation refers to the width of the register. The register is a small amount of storage where the CPU keeps whatever data it needs to access quickly for optimal computer performance. What does 64-bit even mean? In the context of discussions about 32-bit and 64-bit personal computers the XX-bit format refers to the width of the CPU register. Before we start dazzling you with interesting history, let’s get the basics down.