OpenSees 32 bit vs. 64 bit!

[AHARSHIAN]

Hi,

I was working with OpenSees 32 bit on Windows till the new version, OpenSees 2.4.2 released. I checked it but I couldn't find any difference in CPU and Memory Usage. Thus, what is the advantage of 64 bit version?

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks for your comments!

[fmk]

the difference between the 64 and 32 bit version of any software is only the size of the virtual address space the program can use, basically pointers can (theoretically) address memory in range 0 through 2^32 or 2^64. (like 4GigaByte versus 4ExaByte) Thus you will see no difference in speed of the program but only in the size of memory the program can use. In our case it simply means the only benefit is ability to create larger models (and Windows does limit even that .. around 192GB!)

Of course as the speed to access data on the RAM or on the Disk is orders of magnitudes faster, and not anybody will have enough RAM to store even 192GB of virtual memory of a fully maxed out application in their local RAM, the performance as the models get large enough to cause page faulting is going to slow the running application way down.

[linguan118]

That helps, Thanks!