A lot of linux distro has drop 32 bit support.
MS, with the incoming new Win10 version will drop 32 bit support for OEM
These are the stats of 32 and 64 bit in Rosetta:
32 bit (Win+Lin)= 2,343 Gflops
64 bit (Win+Lin)= 529,782 Gflops

It's time to have only 64 bit app for R@H??

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for r@h, i think it is ok to go 64 bits, due to large memory requirements and simplier maintenance.
32bits is still relevant in various contexts. e.g. on 'embedded' boards (which these days are moving towards 64 bits as well).
the trouble with 64 bits is that an int (integer) is often 64 bits on 64 bits hardware. so if you have been allocating 1 million ints, that become 8 million bytes rather than 4 million bytes. literally doubled. that matter as while few people think in terms of allocating 1 million 'ints', data structures often use ints as indexes and references and if you have a million structures it would multiply in size similarly
of course what most memory hungry apps want in that 64 bits is the 64 bit addresses which allows going above 4GB memory. but memory pointers double in size as well

A lot of linux distro has drop 32 bit support.
MS, with the incoming new Win10 version will drop 32 bit support for OEM
These are the stats of 32 and 64 bit in Rosetta:
32 bit (Win+Lin)= 2,343 Gflops
64 bit (Win+Lin)= 529,782 Gflops

It's time to have only 64 bit app for R@H??

So you think it's a good thing to just drop all the 32 bit machines from Rosetta in the middle of a pandemic that Rosetta itself is helping is helping to find a cure/vaccine for?
I think as a long term goal that's not a bad idea but not for the foreseeable future. I think it should also depend on the number of 32 bit machines connected and contributing valid Science, if there are only 3 of them then yes stop supporting them but if there are 30,000 of them that's alot of computing power to no longer support and send elsewhere.
Yes the Boinc client software itself has stopped making new versions of 32 bit software but they said they intend to still support the 32 bit community for as long as the Projects do with the older 32 bit versions.

A lot of linux distro has drop 32 bit support.
MS, with the incoming new Win10 version will drop 32 bit support for OEM
These are the stats of 32 and 64 bit in Rosetta:
32 bit (Win+Lin)= 2,343 Gflops
64 bit (Win+Lin)= 529,782 Gflops

It's time to have only 64 bit app for R@H??

So you think it's a good thing to just drop all the 32 bit machines from Rosetta in the middle of a pandemic that Rosetta itself is helping is helping to find a cure/vaccine for?
I think as a long term goal that's not a bad idea but not for the foreseeable future. I think it should also depend on the number of 32 bit machines connected and contributing valid Science, if there are only 3 of them then yes stop supporting them but if there are 30,000 of them that's alot of computing power to no longer support and send elsewhere.
Yes the Boinc client software itself has stopped making new versions of 32 bit software but they said they intend to still support the 32 bit community for as long as the Projects do with the older 32 bit versions.

True, look at the kerfuffle that changing http to https has caused

So you think it's a good thing to just drop all the 32 bit machines from Rosetta in the middle of a pandemic that Rosetta itself is helping is helping to find a cure/vaccine for?

Yes, it's time.
If you see "Applications" page, you will see that Win32 has a different app (4.21), maybe 'cause bugs/problems.
So devs have to support this different version to have....only 1 Tflops.
Drop 32 bit, clean the code (one admin said: "The Rosetta codebase as of 2019 contains about 3.1 million lines of code.....we estimate that the codebase could be reduced by half without a significant loss of functionality"), optimize it and you will have 100x the computational power of 32bit os.

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i think one of the difficulties is having to maintain entire 2 sets of apps and libraries and tests in those specific 32bit platforms.
i think 32bits (at least in linux) would still be around on mainly 32 bit platforms.
note that it is rather 'common' that in 64 bit os, there can still be libraries which allows 32 bit apps to run in 64 bit os.
i think they may require some tricks such as 'thunking' etc. at the os interface.

But 32 bit os with its apps is somewhat different, this can happen even on 64 bits capable cpu e.g. the first generation of intel compute stick.
the z3735f cpu is used on the Intel compute stick and i think some of the Asus 'net books' pcs.
those may require a 32bit os simply because the bios is a 32bit bios and couldn't boot a 64 bit os

a lot of those 'devices' are shipped with 1-2GB ram and it is deem 'a lot' back then, especially on small devices
so do the earlier Rpi models (some have 1GB) and is considered quite a 'luxury' back then.

i think one of the difficulties is having to maintain entire 2 sets of apps and libraries and tests in those specific 32bit platforms.

+1
What i hope is a "simplification" of code (mantain 3 milions lines of code it's not easy).
Remove the unnecessary is the first step.

a lot of those 'devices' are shipped with 1-2GB ram and it is deem 'a lot' back then, especially on small devices
so do the earlier Rpi models (some have 1GB) and is considered quite a 'luxury' back then.

Rosetta now goes only on Rasp4 (with 64 bit os).

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32 bit (Win+Lin)= 2,343 Gflops
64 bit (Win+Lin)= 529,782 Gflops

Yeah, just set an EOL notice, something like a few months. Less than one percent usage with all the related maintenance costs: go for it.

actually it isn't less usage, but that 32 bit machines are the 'older' machines and probably slower.
in addition a lot of them is probably on little platforms like Intel compute stick and those 'small' computers (e.g. netbooks). so there can indeed be many people running 32bit PCs and OSes but the gflops adds up to a little

these days high core count processors are doing things that the 'small' computers cannot catch up, even for that matter RPi. Pi4 has reached a level of efficiency and speeds that it runs more like 'conventional' PCs even though it is deemed 'embedded'

A lot of linux distro has drop 32 bit support.
MS, with the incoming new Win10 version will drop 32 bit support for OEM
These are the stats of 32 and 64 bit in Rosetta:
32 bit (Win+Lin)= 2,343 Gflops
64 bit (Win+Lin)= 529,782 Gflops

It's time to have only 64 bit app for R@H??

Hi Veneto,

My Pentium laptop is 32 bit so if Rosetta went just 64 bit, my laptop would have nothing to do. Being as old as it is and still running Win 7 Pro 32 bit, I have no idea about how I could re-purpose it. Sure, I'm sure that someone would say, "just find a project that still uses 32 bit apps", but I have no real interest in anything else. I was (am) a die-hard SETI fan and have been for almost 21 years (7 days 'till my 21 years) and now it's gone into hibernation.

Micro$oft thinks they are in complete control of the computing environment and that's an unfortunate truth, they are (too bad they don't put out better software). I'm sure there are a myriad of 32 bit machines still out here doing things just fine for the owners of them. Micro$oft is becoming the evil version of "Oasis" in the movie "Ready Player One". lol ;)

Have a great day! :)

Siran

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CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr XO
USS Vre'kasht NCC-33187

"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

My Pentium laptop is 32 bit so if Rosetta went just 64 bit, my laptop would have nothing to do. Being as old as it is and still running Win 7 Pro 32 bit, I have no idea about how I could re-purpose it. Sure, I'm sure that someone would say, "just find a project that still uses 32 bit apps", but I have no real interest in anything else.

I have an Intel x86 Tablet PC running Ubuntu Linux. It's still perfectly functional, but since Rosetta@home WUs run for a fixed period of time, rather than processing a fixed amount of work, I was concerned that this machine wasn't providing as high-quality a result as much more powerful machines would if they had the WU instead.

Ultimately, I decided to pull my Tablet PC and a handful of other weaker machines off of Rosetta@home, and have them crunching for other projects instead (currently WCG OpenPandemics and Ibercivis). I still keep them on ralph@home to make them available for testing.

At this point, x86 machines are obsolete. Even the processors in my mobile phone are more powerful than the fastest 32-bit Intel or AMD processors. I've been toying with the idea of moving my x86 machine to a support role (monitoring, PXE boot, shared NFS storage, etc.), but given that Linux distros are completely dropping support for x86, I'll probably just retire it.

Hi Veneto

Ehm, i'm boboviz. Veneto is a region of Italy. No problem :-)

My Pentium laptop is 32 bit so if Rosetta went just 64 bit, my laptop would have nothing to do. Being as old as it is and still running Win 7 Pro 32 bit, I have no idea about how I could re-purpose it. Sure, I'm sure that someone would say, "just find a project that still uses 32 bit apps", but I have no real interest in anything else.

It's the old problems of gflops per watt. 10 years ago cpu is NOT efficent, we know.
My penultimate cpu is an AMD FX6300 (a cpu of 8 years ago), 6 threads with 90 Watt.
If i will change my actual cpu, i'll buy an AMD 3700, 16 threads with 65 Watt (and with more IPC!!).

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I think it may be time to drop 32bit support. I spent a few long days trying to debug the windows 32bit app (thus the 4.21 version), with no luck. It is still failing on most hosts. We'll probably remove the 32bit apps on the next app update due to very low success rates.

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