32bit vs 64bit

[Alan Evans]

On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 7:24 AM, Bingo <right.ho at gmail.com> wrote:
> Read this for a comparison in performance for 32 bit, and 64 bit linux:
> http://bingouv.blogspot.com/2008/08/desktop-linux-performance-comparison32.html
> .

Please don't take undue offence, but I don't think that your testing
methodology sufficiently isolated the thing you were comparing. For
example, your function for calculating factorials:

define f (x) {
if (x <= 1) return (1);
return (f(x-1) * x);
}

Unless the tail recursion was optimized out of this, your result will
likely be swamped by the overhead of much stack manipulation. And the
fact that you used bc means that the the actual calculating is once or
twice removed from the architecture.

To be fair, you did recognize this in the last paragraph of your
article. And I'm not saying that your comparisons have no value, just
that their value is diminished for considering the difference between
32 and 64 bit processor architecture.