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Category: 64-bit

Did you know? Visual Studio is 32-bit only!

Posted on March 21, 2021December 31, 2021 by David

Update: This is now obsolete as Visual Studio 2022 which appeared in November 2021 is 64-bit. D’oh!

It’s quite surprising that in this day and age, that there is still 32-bit software in use. Visual Studio is a prime example. Windows has been 64-bit for quite a while now.

If you look in Task Manager, you’ll probably notice that programs with a (32 bit) after their name are few and far between.

On the screenshot, only one out of 11 is 32-bit and that’s pretty typical. Linux and Mac are probably similar. Here’s a stackexchange question on how to tell if a process is 32 or 64 bit.

In Visual Studio, it’s very easy to switch between 32-bit or 64-bit compile target. Unless I have a real need, I go for 32-bit for programs I write because they are typically not going to need over 4 GB of RAM. And 32-bit code usually runs faster than 64-bit because instructions are typically shorter which means more instructions in the execution cache etc.

However some systems have a lot of code and there are people who want a 64-bit version of Visual Studio. You can read some of their requests here.

I’m still on a Linux laptop BTW. My new cooler has turned up and tomorrow I hope to install it. The Windows screenshot came from my work laptop which I emailed to myself!

Benchmarking my Raspberry Pi

Posted on June 20, 2020June 14, 2020 by David

I played with a couple of free packages today. I can recommend hardinfo. (sudo apt install hardinfo to install then hardinfo to run ) though less about the benchmarks than the information it gives on your system.

I’ve got both 32-bit Raspbian and 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS on two sd cards and intend to run both and compare benchmarks just to see the difference.

Another benchmark utility that looks interesting is sysbench (sudo apt install sysbench to install). It runs from the terminal and lets you run benchmarks against file io, cpu, memory threads, mutex and oltp. Just type sysbench and you’ll get a list of commands.

How to install VSCodium on a Raspberry Pi.

Posted on June 19, 2020June 19, 2020 by David

It was very easy. This was onto my Pi 4 running 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS.

Go to the releases page on the vsCodium website, it’s on GitHub. If you are running 32-bit Pi OS then you need the codium_1.46.0-1591900344_armhf.deb file (the number will most likely have changed). For the 64-bit one, you need the codium_1.46.0-1591900344_arm64.deb.

When you click on the link it will download and ask if you want to keep it. It will then give you the option of opening it and select the archiver. That will install it for you.

After that, to run it from the command line just type codium.

Or as I just discovered. Look on the pull down menu, go onto accessories and you should see (probably near the bottom) VSCodium. Move the mouse over and right-click.You’ll see a popup menu with Add to Desktop and Properties. If you click the former, you get an icon on your desktop.

Screenshots were captured with the Flameshot utility. It’s installed with sudo apt install flameshot. That’s the VSCodium and Flameshot icons.

Playing with 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS

Posted on June 12, 2020June 3, 2020 by David

So after deciding I was going to wait until the 64-bit Pi OS was tested and ready for use, I changed my mind and downloaded the beta and installed it.

It ran ok, though as with any Beta there are bound to be little glitches. There’s a survey where they are interested in what the PI is being used for and it showed UNDEFINED for my Pi’s serial number, though

cat /proc/cpuinfo

worked fine and displayed it.

The display utility let me change my display to 75 HZ at 1920 x 1080 and then promptly crashed. After reboot though it was at 75 HZ.

My main reason for trying it out though, I was curious about development tools, particularly IDES. I had forgotten that code.headmelted.com, the alternative source for Visual Studio Code (my favourite) supported arm64 which is what the 64-bit runs. I was able to install VS Code from there without any problems.

64-bit vs 32-bit

32-bit has the memory limitation of 3 GB (in both Windows and Linux) whereas 64-bit offers any amount of RAM up to what’s available. It’s not that big thing with a 4 GB PI but with 8 GB it can make a big difference. This article (Sorry that the link is to an article on Medium.com which offers a few free articles then paid) suggests that 64-bit Debian (which Raspberry Pi OS is) is quite a bit faster than 32-bit. My impression is that it feels a bit snappier but that could be wishful thinking n my part!

I’ll put Asteroids on and see what fps I can get though that may not be a great way to compare them as the GPU plays a big part and I can’t see it making any difference, but I could be completely wrong on that. More as I investigate further.

Raspberry Pi 4B with 8 GB RAM on sale

Posted on June 3, 2020June 3, 2020 by David

I won’t be buying one for the moment but I mention it for another reason. 4 GB is the maximum RAM that a 32-bit OS can use, and on the PI like on Windows it’s actually 3 GB. To be fair you can have two processes each with 3 GB on the 8 GB Pi.

The announcement did mention that a beta 64-bit Raspbian OS is available for download and it’s here. This article shows that the 64-bit Os they tested is faster on the Pi than 32-bit. This link to the DietPi forum tells you how to boot dietpi into 64-bit.

It’s to be hoped that 64-bit ARM development software will become available. Clang and gcc should be but I’m thinking of the code.headmelted.com version of Visual Studio Code.

As always if you are buying a Raspberry Pi 4B, I strongly suggest you get a case with a fan. They are not expensive and do make a difference. Despite running the Asteroids game, which is pretty intense, I have never got my 4B temperature above 51C. THat said I’ve ordered a touchscreen with a case for a 4B on the back and it doesn’t seem to take a fan. So it will be interesting to see what its like fanless. More on that when the touchscreen arrives.