What types of apps should be run on 64-bit platforms?
64-bit computing is all about placing a lot more data in memory than 32-bit systems can handle. Placing more data in memory -- rather than having to read it from disk -- results in fewer input/output read/writes to disk subsystems, which are significantly slower than direct access to memory. It also makes data access and processing more efficient. Further, placing more data in memory also reduces database management overhead.
Applications that reap the most benefit by moving to 64-bit environments are those that involve a lot of data handling. Think of it this way: if a whole database can be placed into memory and processed without having to be read from or written to disk, then great processing efficiencies result. At the top of the list of applications that benefit from 64-bit computing are data-intensive applications such as decision support, high-performance computing applications such as drug discovery, mechanical computer-aided engineering (MCAE) and electronic design automation (EDA). Also, several business applications, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) often use very large databases -- and are strong candidates for 64-bit platforms.
