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- Path: dragon.solect.com!usenet
- From: gallantm@kanservu.ca (Matt Gallant)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.programming
- Subject: Re: Why are 32 bit better than 16 bit pgms?
- Date: 19 Jan 1996 07:58:12 GMT
- Organization: KanServU Bureau, Inc. Aylmer, Ontario Canada
- Message-ID: <4dniuk$lms@dragon.solect.com>
- References: <30FBFFE6.1FEB@netcom.com>
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- In article <30FBFFE6.1FEB@netcom.com>, vain@netcom.com says...
- >
- >I have a simple questions:
- >
- > What's are 32 bit pgms better than 16 bit programs?
- >
- > Thanks!
-
- The answer to this question can be a matter of opinion. The common answers
- given are:
-
- 1. For developers, programming becomes easier because you no longer have to
- worry about memory segmentation. Because of this, data structures and blocks
- are no longer limited to 64K. No more segment:offset addressing. Your
- program can "pretend" that memory is a "flat" range, and just use 32-bit pointers
- ranging from byte 0 through 4GB. (Of course, not all of this memory area is valid
- to the process without making the proper memory allocations)
-
- 2. 32-bit programs are pre-emptively multitasked. A 32-bit application can no
- longer hog the process by not yielding on a timely basis. (There is one snag to
- this scheme if you're running on Windows 95, and if you develop for Windows 95
- you are sure to hear about it. This "snag" is refered to as the Win16Lock or
- Win16Mutex.)
-
- 3. 32-bit programs are (to a large extent) portable. If written correctly, one set
- of source files can be compiled and run on Windows 95 and Windows NT, as well
- as being compiled for other non-Intel x86 platforms (i.e. Alpha processors).
-
- 4. Also, consider that as new APIs are developed (by Microsoft and 3rd parties)
- that they will probably only be ported to the Win32 platforms. For example, I
- was just reading an Microsoft Systems Journal article about their new Speech API.
- I'm not sure that it's necessarily 32-bit only, but obviously, something as
- processing-intensive as speech synthesis and speech recognition will benefit from
- 32-bits.
-
- 5. Last, but definitely not least, 32-bit programs are allowed to have multiple
- threads of execution. This allows you to easily create and execute routines "in the
- background" just by creating a new thread. You no longer have to set up your
- different tasks to be done and come up with ways of switching between them
- yourself, just create a new thread, and Win32 platforms will schedule your
- background tasks themselves.
-
- I hope this is what you were looking for. :-)
-
-
- --
- Matt Gallant
- Aylmer, Ontario Canada
-
-