Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff dot com. Hello, everyone, Welcome
Speaker 1: to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Pollette, and I'm
Speaker 1: an editor at how stuff works dot com. And sitting
Speaker 1: just a bit across from me is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Midnight,
Speaker 1: not a sound on the pavement. Has the moon lost
Speaker 1: her memory? She's smiling alone. This podcast will be much
Speaker 1: better than KATS Yes, I should hope, So I'm going
Speaker 1: to listen to it again and again. Anyway, So, yeah,
Speaker 1: today we're gonna talk. We had actually some requests come
Speaker 1: in about explaining thirty two bit versus sixty four bit
Speaker 1: in the terms of computers. What does that mean? What
Speaker 1: is sixty bit automatically better than thirty two bit? What's
Speaker 1: the deal behind this? Because we've seen some operating systems
Speaker 1: come out over the last several years, especially since like
Speaker 1: Windows Vista that had sixty four bit versions and thirty
Speaker 1: two bit versions and not all would work on every computer.
Speaker 1: What's up with that? Anyway? Well, the answers to those
Speaker 1: questions is basically yes, no, maybe it's a computer architecture question.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, so and and the answer is
Speaker 1: is not definitive. I mean it's sort of well anyway,
Speaker 1: let's talk about it. Okay, yeah, so let's talk about
Speaker 1: what it all means to be thirty two bit versus
Speaker 1: sixty four bit in the first place. So, well, that
Speaker 1: part's easy. We're talking about computer architecture here. Now, just
Speaker 1: on a high level, this is going to be very
Speaker 1: general for all of you. So all of you computer
Speaker 1: scientists out there, Uh, you might want to fast forward
Speaker 1: a little bit because your your eyes may start bulging
Speaker 1: if you hear me describe computers in these simplistic terms.
Speaker 1: Make yourself a sandwich. But in general, you have this
Speaker 1: thing in your computer, the central processing unit, all right,
Speaker 1: And they're basically two ways to try and make a CPU,
Speaker 1: uh do more work or or be more efficient. Um,
Speaker 1: and I'm saying basically two ways are actually more than that,
Speaker 1: especially if you go into multi core processing. But if
Speaker 1: you're talking about single core processor, you can either make
Speaker 1: the processor work faster, which means that it can operate.
Speaker 1: It could complete more operations in the same amount of
Speaker 1: time as a slower CPU. Right, So operations are done
Speaker 1: in uh in in uh cycles for a second. So
Speaker 1: how many times the clock cycles per second with that
Speaker 1: particular processor essentially means how many operations that can do,
Speaker 1: although some operations require multiple cycles. Okay, so you can
Speaker 1: make your computer go faster by putting in a faster processor.
Speaker 1: But another way computers can go faster is if they
Speaker 1: can process more information at one time than a slower
Speaker 1: process or a processor that runs at the same speed
Speaker 1: but does less information at the time. Because for a
Speaker 1: processor to to actually execute commands and to crunch numbers
Speaker 1: essentially is what a secret is doing. It's computing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pulling information from the computer's memory and then executing
Speaker 1: a series of commands that are dictated by whatever the
Speaker 1: application that's running says it has to do, and then
Speaker 1: you get the output. All right, So, if you have
Speaker 1: a narrow pathway, then only so much information can come
Speaker 1: through at a time. If you make that pathway wider,
Speaker 1: more information can come in and that same amount of time,
Speaker 1: the information is not necessarily traveling faster, is just more
Speaker 1: of they can go through. So if we use the
Speaker 1: handy dandy, let's talk about a building metaphor that I
Speaker 1: always like to go with. Let's say you've got a building,
Speaker 1: it's got a doorway that's one person wide, and got
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of people who want to go in,
Speaker 1: uh to that building, but they all have to move
Speaker 1: at a specific rate. They cannot run the been the
Speaker 1: hall monitors are there and they're telling everyone no running.
Speaker 1: Then it's gonna take a certain amount of time for
Speaker 1: all those people to get into the building filing in
Speaker 1: single file through that one person wide opening. Now let's
Speaker 1: take that same building, but we've done some reconstruction on it.
Speaker 1: We've made that building so that there are three people
Speaker 1: can walk side by side into that and you still
Speaker 1: tell everyone no running, so they're moving at the same speed,
Speaker 1: but now more people can go into the building in
Speaker 1: the same amount of time as it took. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're gonna take less time to get everybody in
Speaker 1: than it took for the single person version of that building.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of the idea behind this computer architecture
Speaker 1: with thirty two bit versus sixty four bit at a
Speaker 1: very high level. Yeah, and the thing is, it's, uh,
Speaker 1: there are a number of things that affect U in
Speaker 1: your overall computer architecture. There are a number of things
Speaker 1: that affect how much information can be handled by the
Speaker 1: CPU at a time. For example, you know all the
Speaker 1: different cabling and everything else that's in there. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're if you have a better graphics, faster graphics processor,
Speaker 1: your graphics processor will handle more graphics. But we're speaking
Speaker 1: specifically of the CPU and not of the cables that
Speaker 1: run that information to the different parts of the computer
Speaker 1: and those things. We're talking about the actual processor itself.
Speaker 1: And there is one other thing, however, that uh, that
Speaker 1: it needs to handle this and and that is forgotten
Speaker 1: what it was? What is it? Data bus? Memory? I remember? Now? Well,
Speaker 1: the data bus is the the the pathway between memory
Speaker 1: and the CPU. Well, yeah, that's the thing. See that
Speaker 1: that pathway has to be ample enough to to carry
Speaker 1: uh information. But the memory, the amount of memory you have,
Speaker 1: and how your CPU handles memory is pivotal to how
Speaker 1: well your computer can handle instruction. Yeah. So that's when
Speaker 1: we talk about computer architecture. You're not just talking about
Speaker 1: one component in the computer. If you put a sixty
Speaker 1: four bit processor in a computer and you didn't change
Speaker 1: anything else, it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't matter, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: it because even though you've got a sixty four bit
Speaker 1: processor and there the rest of the computer is not
Speaker 1: designed with the architecture that's necessary to take advantage of that.
Speaker 1: So with the memory, you you know, sixty four bit
Speaker 1: processor would be able to access more memory because the
Speaker 1: sixty four bit that talks about how much information can
Speaker 1: come through, right, and so it's effectively twice as much
Speaker 1: as the thirty two bit. Right, so you've got what
Speaker 1: go ahead, I heard the inhale of stopping anyway. The so,
Speaker 1: so the data bus is it's not a bus like
Speaker 1: get on the bus, you know, or deserts or desert bus.
Speaker 1: It will drive for eight hours and get one point. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well who Tucson. So yeah, the data bus is essentially
Speaker 1: the pathway from the memory to the CPU. So you
Speaker 1: with a sixty four bit system, you're gonna have more memory,
Speaker 1: more random access memory, more RAM You're going to have
Speaker 1: a larger data bus. The data bus that's the sixty
Speaker 1: four bit data bus that is going to allow sixty
Speaker 1: four bit information to pass through as opposed to thirty
Speaker 1: two bit, and then the sixty four bit processor that
Speaker 1: can process information. This does not work well for every
Speaker 1: kind of computer problem. There are certain kinds of computer
Speaker 1: problems that just don't need that. It's not that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not that it's harmful, it just isn't beneficial. So
Speaker 1: in other words, let's say that we go back to
Speaker 1: that building example. All right, and let's say that you
Speaker 1: only have one person who has to get in the building. Well,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how why the doorway is. If there's
Speaker 1: no obstruction, then that person is going to get in
Speaker 1: the building at the same speed. Whether the doorways one
Speaker 1: person wide or three people wide. Well, same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: If you have a computer application that doesn't require massive uh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't require the CPU to constantly be pulling information
Speaker 1: from memory, then it's not gonna see a big benefit
Speaker 1: to switching from thirty two bit system to a sixty
Speaker 1: four bit system. Oh and I forgot another piece. We
Speaker 1: were talking about computer architecture. With all the physical hardware,
Speaker 1: you also have to have an operating system that can
Speaker 1: take advantage of the sixty four bit architecture. So if
Speaker 1: you have a sixty four bit system, you would need
Speaker 1: to get an operating system that's also a sixty four
Speaker 1: bit operating system if you wanted to run at that
Speaker 1: full speed. Most sixty four bit systems are capable at
Speaker 1: running thirty two bit UH software UM usually through either
Speaker 1: UH there's like a there might be a thirty two
Speaker 1: bit core that's incorporated in the TOM itself, or it
Speaker 1: might be that there's an emulator running. But usually a
Speaker 1: sixty four bit system is capable of running thirty two
Speaker 1: bits software. If it weren't, then you would rapidly discover
Speaker 1: that most software would be unusable because not not everyone
Speaker 1: has upgraded up to sixty four bit yet. Before you
Speaker 1: send us a list of all the software that you've
Speaker 1: tried on your sixty four bit system that doesn't work,
Speaker 1: remember your mileage may vary. Some restrictions apply. It also
Speaker 1: depends heavily upon the actual operating system and how it
Speaker 1: was providing that support. Because again, if you're talking about
Speaker 1: emulators that does that's not a one size fits all approach,
Speaker 1: you know, So go ahead. I was gonna say, here's
Speaker 1: the interesting part about the thirty two bit versus sixty
Speaker 1: four bit systems. Thirty two bit systems can only address
Speaker 1: a certain amount well, all of them can address a
Speaker 1: certain amount of computer memory of RAM, And with thirty
Speaker 1: two bit systems, you can only address for gigabytes of RAM,
Speaker 1: and back in the day, everyone thought four gigabytes a RAM, Wow,
Speaker 1: we'll never need that much. That that famous quote attributed
Speaker 1: to Bill Gates, which apparently he never said about how much.
Speaker 1: I forgotten how much it was, like megabytes or something
Speaker 1: like that. But um, but yeah, people said, well, that's
Speaker 1: that's plenty for what we do. But the thing about
Speaker 1: it is, now we're using computers to do high end
Speaker 1: graphics work and high end soundwork. Um, scientific calculations, scientific calculations.
Speaker 1: We expect our game machines to render beautiful three D
Speaker 1: graphics where where the hair on people's heads moves with
Speaker 1: the breeze and the leaves, there's no clipping or effect.
Speaker 1: It doesn't affect the physics engine at all. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the thing is, at a certain point, uh, you're
Speaker 1: you're kind of looking for more from the system because
Speaker 1: we're able to do these things now. So they've enabled processors,
Speaker 1: and these sixty four bit processors are not brand new.
Speaker 1: They didn't come out in These have been on the
Speaker 1: market for for several years and in fact, the earliest
Speaker 1: ones date from the seventies. Yeah. Yeah, the Kraze supercomputer,
Speaker 1: the original kraz one supercomputer had a sixty four bit architecture. Yes, so,
Speaker 1: while um so, while thirty two bit machines can address
Speaker 1: for gigabytes of RAM, a sixty four bit machine and
Speaker 1: this sort of sounds like our I p v six
Speaker 1: thing can address seventeen point two billion gigabytes of RAM,
Speaker 1: which is far more than any of our machines will
Speaker 1: hold at this point. Now, I've seen machines that will
Speaker 1: hold sixty four gigabytes of RAM. They're probably some really
Speaker 1: high end machines that will hold even more than that,
Speaker 1: but it's still far more than the operating system and
Speaker 1: computer hardware can access right now. So basically, this is
Speaker 1: a build for the future, the immediate foreseeable future, and
Speaker 1: the more. Um. If you've ever heard somebody say, hey,
Speaker 1: I know, if you really want to speed up your computer,
Speaker 1: a cheap way to do that is to add more RAM. Well,
Speaker 1: in general that's true. If you have more memory space,
Speaker 1: that gives your computer a lot more room to handle uh,
Speaker 1: regular calculations, because keep in mind that your operating system
Speaker 1: is taking up a certain amount of RAM and all
Speaker 1: the other operating stuff under the UM that that's hanging
Speaker 1: out with it, like say um virus protection software and
Speaker 1: other things that you use on a daily basis, and
Speaker 1: then you open up Photoshop to work on on stuff
Speaker 1: and it runs incredibly slow. And why, oh man, why
Speaker 1: does this run so slow? Well, if it had more memory,
Speaker 1: it would be far easier for the computer to allocate
Speaker 1: and resources to Photoshop because it's already got a bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff in memory. So yeah, it's it's it's both
Speaker 1: the processor speed itself and the speed at which it
Speaker 1: can or the amount of memory it can access a
Speaker 1: think of a huge difference. Yeah, think of it this way,
Speaker 1: like your your computer. If if you're processor had to
Speaker 1: access your hard drive every time you need to pull
Speaker 1: up information, it would slow everything down, right, Like if
Speaker 1: it had to go into your hard drive in order
Speaker 1: to pull whatever the information is in order to execute
Speaker 1: the file you just said, or the execute the command
Speaker 1: you just made, then it would slow things down to
Speaker 1: a crawl. So if you were playing a game, for example,
Speaker 1: and you press the jump button and the and so
Speaker 1: you've you've executed the command. You've pressed the button that's
Speaker 1: going to cause your character to jump. Apparently that character
Speaker 1: is Mario, then the jump man. The computer will then
Speaker 1: take that command, it would have to search your hard
Speaker 1: drive to find out all right, I've been given this command,
Speaker 1: here's the sub parameters that the game is in right now.
Speaker 1: What happens next? It would get that information, process it,
Speaker 1: and then send it back to you, and this would
Speaker 1: take a long time. RAM what it does is it
Speaker 1: allows you allows the computer to pull the essentially the
Speaker 1: most pertinent information to whatever is going on right then
Speaker 1: and there to be in a temporary storage space so
Speaker 1: that the processor doesn't have to access the hard drive
Speaker 1: in order to load stuff. It just accesses RAM. And
Speaker 1: that's much faster because you know the RAM is just
Speaker 1: going to be there for the duration of the instance
Speaker 1: that you're on, like until you shut your computer down. UM.
Speaker 1: This is also why if you're playing a game on
Speaker 1: a console and you get to a new level and
Speaker 1: you get that loading screen, well, essentially it's loading that
Speaker 1: information into the consoles RAMS so that when you're playing
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to refer back to the hard drive
Speaker 1: and and that would impact your experience. So that's the
Speaker 1: same sort of idea. And now with the sixty four
Speaker 1: bit system, what you've done is dramatically increase the amount
Speaker 1: of RAM your system can potentially have, which means the
Speaker 1: CPU will not have to go back to the hard
Speaker 1: drive as frequently. Yeah, and the thing is, I mean
Speaker 1: load more information all at one time. Sorry, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I didn't realize, but my brain clicked. I
Speaker 1: had to go back to hard drive space. I see,
Speaker 1: I see where we should increase your RAM. So, um,
Speaker 1: I've been trying well, um, and and this is great.
Speaker 1: You know. Of course, you can always speed stuff up
Speaker 1: by closing things that you're not using, you know, but uh, this,
Speaker 1: this presents a real advantage for people who are are
Speaker 1: doing things that are memory heavy, or people who need
Speaker 1: to keep multiple programs open. Say you're editing an article
Speaker 1: and you have your word processor and your graphics programs.
Speaker 1: You can do the photos that go along with the article,
Speaker 1: and you have your email open. I've got it to
Speaker 1: do list already. You don't have to drive at home
Speaker 1: like that. But yeah, I mean you're working on all
Speaker 1: those things simultaneously. If you have enough RAM, you should
Speaker 1: be able to work fairly quickly as you as you
Speaker 1: go from one back and forth, you know, to the other.
Speaker 1: Because it's already loaded into RAM, the computer doesn't have
Speaker 1: to go and search for stuff. So let's use Let's
Speaker 1: use my home computer as an example. UM. It's about
Speaker 1: three years old at the time we're recording this UM,
Speaker 1: and it has a physical memory capacity of four gigabytes
Speaker 1: of RAM. Now I have an operating system that will
Speaker 1: run in either thirty two bit or sixty four bit mode.
Speaker 1: The question is should I boot into sixty four bit
Speaker 1: mode or should I just default to thirty two bit
Speaker 1: depending on what you're using. Actually, i'd say just default
Speaker 1: the thirty two bit because it won't even I can't
Speaker 1: even take advantage of the sixty four bit advantage of
Speaker 1: being able to address more RAM because I don't even
Speaker 1: have the capacity for more than four gigabytes and RAM.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make any sense to do that. But UM,
Speaker 1: and you can have a top ended machine, but if
Speaker 1: you're running an older operating system on it that won't
Speaker 1: run in sixty four bit mode, you're not able to
Speaker 1: take advantage of it. So, as Jonathan pointed out earlier,
Speaker 1: you have to have the machine, you have to have
Speaker 1: more memory than for gigabytes, and you have to have
Speaker 1: the operating system basically to take advantage of these benefits.
Speaker 1: But if you do that will really help you out. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: let's say that you want to do some heavy duty
Speaker 1: video editing and and let's see you're working on a
Speaker 1: feature link film. Well, the benefit to a sixty four
Speaker 1: bit system is that you would be able to to
Speaker 1: load a lot more footage in a single go than
Speaker 1: you would if you had a thirty two bit system.
Speaker 1: It would just be much faster, much more efficient. And
Speaker 1: it's not again necessarily because the processor is faster. Now, grant,
Speaker 1: a faster processor also helps things a lot. And then
Speaker 1: we've talked in the past a bit about multi core processors,
Speaker 1: which uh seem to give seem to be faster, even
Speaker 1: though if you look at the processor speeds, they may
Speaker 1: not be that much faster than a single core processor.
Speaker 1: In that case, the reason why it's it's uh working
Speaker 1: a more efficiently is because it's dividing up computer problems
Speaker 1: into segments, and each core works on a segment of
Speaker 1: the problem and then it ends up being put together
Speaker 1: kind of like a puzzle in the end. And that's
Speaker 1: what the you know, that's why a multi core will
Speaker 1: work best for certain kinds of problems. Again, just like
Speaker 1: we were talking about with the sixty four bit versus
Speaker 1: thirty two bit, a multi core processor isn't necessarily going
Speaker 1: to execute every single application at a faster speed than
Speaker 1: a comparable single core processor because some just don't. Some
Speaker 1: problems just don't break down into components. Uh. The ones
Speaker 1: that do we call parallel problems. And uh, in in
Speaker 1: case of grid computing, when you're talking about things like
Speaker 1: folding proteins, you call them embarrassingly parallel problems. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: didn't mean to bring up the subject. But anyway, Uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's a that's another key element to computer speeds. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: sixty four bit operating systems. When when Windows came out
Speaker 1: with Windows Vista for six or four bit Windows Vista,
Speaker 1: there were some problems. Okay, first of all, there were
Speaker 1: problems with within Windows Vista, right, that operating system got
Speaker 1: a really bad name pretty quickly because there were a
Speaker 1: lot of name Oh I'm sorry, I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: they had a reputation for being not the best operating system.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of features that people didn't care for,
Speaker 1: and there were a lot of problems with its supporting
Speaker 1: certain kinds of software versus not supporting other kinds. And
Speaker 1: it's not yeah, right, so but the sixty four bit
Speaker 1: system when it came out, there were even more problems,
Speaker 1: and part of it was because it was, you know,
Speaker 1: fairly young for the personal computing era. Against sixty four
Speaker 1: bit architecture had been around for for more than a decade,
Speaker 1: but but the actual use of it in personal computers
Speaker 1: was pretty much brand new when the sixty four bit
Speaker 1: Windows Vista version came out. Since then, we've seen computer
Speaker 1: engineers really kind of optimized operating systems for sixty four bit,
Speaker 1: so it's not as big a problem now. Unix had
Speaker 1: a leg up a are pretty much everybody else on
Speaker 1: that one. But now we're seeing it with other systems,
Speaker 1: not just not just Unix or or its variants. So
Speaker 1: should you go out and buy a sixty four bit system,
Speaker 1: My suggestion would be unless your depends. Yeah, unless you're
Speaker 1: really working with some heavy duty videos software, you're doing
Speaker 1: scientific calculations, or you just want the most screaming video
Speaker 1: games ever made, you probably don't need to worry about
Speaker 1: it too much. Because the thing about video game machines
Speaker 1: is often you do have a dedicated graphics processor, which
Speaker 1: takes a lot of the helps. Yeah, it takes a
Speaker 1: lot of the weight off of your CPU, although you
Speaker 1: then have to add weight with a cooling system. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I would say that a sixty four bit
Speaker 1: system probably is not necessary for most people right now. Now,
Speaker 1: over time, as the the whole all the parts get
Speaker 1: cheaper than the operating systems will become or standardized. We'll
Speaker 1: probably see sixty four bit become the news standard. And
Speaker 1: in that case it won't be a question of sixty
Speaker 1: four versus thirty two. It will be sixty four bit
Speaker 1: is what's in the store, so that's what you get.
Speaker 1: But right now, if you're shopping around, uh, just keep
Speaker 1: in mind that even though the number is bigger, it
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean you're going to experience. Uh, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean your computing computing experience is immediately going to be
Speaker 1: twice as fast as what it used to be on
Speaker 1: your old thirty two bit system. Yeah. Yeah, And um,
Speaker 1: as far as one systems go, I mean, the thing
Speaker 1: is for for home computing. Really, I don't think the
Speaker 1: average person needs anything like that, or or will need
Speaker 1: anything like that for quite some time. If you're trying
Speaker 1: to give sentience to your refrigerator, you may need a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty eight system for something like you know,
Speaker 1: high end scientific computing. Well, sure, you know, super computer
Speaker 1: type stuff. If you're searching for intelligent life, possibly in
Speaker 1: this office, that joke is coming. Uh no, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean when you when you're already able to address
Speaker 1: seventeen exabytes of memory and you can't even fit that
Speaker 1: inside the box. Yeah, there's no way to the memory
Speaker 1: because the Yeah, you would have to have a computer
Speaker 1: the size of well, the old ones because and I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about the old computers. I'm talking about the
Speaker 1: fictional Cathulu gods, the old ones. You have to have
Speaker 1: a computer that size, so large that would rip the
Speaker 1: sanity from your mind. Perhaps less scary, but depends on
Speaker 1: what it's running. Yeah. So I mean this is it's
Speaker 1: sort of again like the I p V six thing.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing that's going to get
Speaker 1: us through a long time. We will the the average
Speaker 1: person is not going to need to worry about this
Speaker 1: again anytime. Yeah. Now we say a long time, but
Speaker 1: keep in mind, is computing a long time. Exactly five
Speaker 1: years is a long time in computing terms. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to make that clear before we had people right
Speaker 1: in Well, I still remember, you know, talking about RAM
Speaker 1: being a cheap way to upgrade your computer. Um, I
Speaker 1: can buy another two gigabyte chip and pull out the
Speaker 1: one that's in the available slot. I've got now to
Speaker 1: upgrade to a full four. I've got three. I've got
Speaker 1: two slots in mine, and it came with to one
Speaker 1: gigabyte RAM sticks. I pulled one out and put it
Speaker 1: two in there, and I could do the other one
Speaker 1: for I think last time I looked twenty six or
Speaker 1: thirty dollar or something like that. I remember buying a
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty six megabyte RAM chip for about
Speaker 1: a dollar a meg so, so it cost the memory
Speaker 1: has has decreased dramatically, and that was probably about fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago. So you know, when we get to the
Speaker 1: point where, uh we're talking about exitbytes of memory, it'll
Speaker 1: probably be you know, yeah, it'll be a while, but
Speaker 1: you know, memory will probably be so inexpense, at least
Speaker 1: at that point by the recording of this podcast. So
Speaker 1: it be so funny if this podcast went live and
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, did you get your out of teen xavitem,
Speaker 1: because I've got mine. You have to you have to
Speaker 1: bite in one ex sticks, so you've only got five slots.
Speaker 1: Each stick is about five miles long. Yeah, so the yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we've got that. That's another good point. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's the physical limitation of what we can build right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the thing is that these chips do take
Speaker 1: up physical space. So you know, for you to cram
Speaker 1: more memory, you can't just I mean, there's not like
Speaker 1: there's not like a switch that you click and you're like,
Speaker 1: suddenly you've got more memory. You have to build those chips,
Speaker 1: and the chips do get larger as you need more memory.
Speaker 1: So because there's only a certain point at which the
Speaker 1: physical you can store information in the physical architecture of
Speaker 1: memory right now. Before that that we have advances going.
Speaker 1: You know, there are advances in that every single year.
Speaker 1: Just like Moore's law talks about the number of transistors
Speaker 1: on the chip, that also applies to things like memory.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, we're nowhere near being will have
Speaker 1: been an exit by a memory on a square inch
Speaker 1: chip unless it's unless it's significantly tall. So that that,
Speaker 1: I guess would be the last um of my suggestions.
Speaker 1: If you're looking at the difference between a thirty two
Speaker 1: and sixty four, if you can afford a sixty four
Speaker 1: bit system, you're ready to upgrade, you might as well
Speaker 1: go ahead and do it, because you'll be It's not
Speaker 1: like you, I mean you have to worry about the
Speaker 1: one uh systems systems coming out next year. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: you know, you can you could feel comfortable knowing that
Speaker 1: this is something that will last you some your future,
Speaker 1: proofing yourself to an extent, although again, as the components
Speaker 1: get more advanced, you may have to You know, if
Speaker 1: you're comfortable with the idea of popping open your computer
Speaker 1: and switching stuff out occasionally, then it shouldn't be a
Speaker 1: big deal. And the operating systems we had for a
Speaker 1: while for the last few years have been sixty four
Speaker 1: bit capable and on basically everything Lennox, Mac, Windows, So um,
Speaker 1: you know it might be in your advantage to your
Speaker 1: advantage to upgrade. Yep. So I guess that wraps up
Speaker 1: this discussion. Hey guess what what this episode is is
Speaker 1: gonna come in under thirty minutes. Really, it's like the
Speaker 1: first one in Ages, right, But it was a nice
Speaker 1: simple topic to tackle, and it was good for us
Speaker 1: to kind of get into that whole architecture thing because
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are kind of confused
Speaker 1: by this. And again, when you hear numbers, you immediately
Speaker 1: think the bigger number is automatically better in all cases,
Speaker 1: and it's not always. That's not always the case. It's
Speaker 1: also interesting that it sounds complex, but it's remarkably simple
Speaker 1: really when you get down to it. Yeah, once you
Speaker 1: get it, once you start thinking about those buildings. Yeah. Alright,
Speaker 1: Well we're gonna wrap this up. If you guys have
Speaker 1: any topics you would like us to tackle on future episodes,
Speaker 1: you can let us know via email. Our addresses tech
Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff Works dot com, or drop us
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook or Twitter are handled. There is
Speaker 1: tech stuff H. S W and Chris and I will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really O. Be sure to check
Speaker 1: out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
Speaker 1: How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
Speaker 1: and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House Stuff Works iPhone
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