Are You 64?

(by the way, in which category do benchmarks go?)

If you bought a computer in the past few years, it probably has a 64 bit CPU. The x86-64 architecture (sometimes referred to as AMD64 or EM64T) was invented by AMD as the successor to the X86 architecture, and has since been picked up by Intel. It is in AMD's processors since the Athlon 64 and in Intel's since the Pentium D.

But unless you're a power user, you're probably not running a 64bit OS (examples of 64bit OSes include Windows Server 2k3 x64, XP Pro x64, Vista x64, and 64 bit versions of Linux, OSX, and *BSD). And even if you are a power user, you probably have some 32bit apps and drivers kicking around in there.

As a power user, the lack of attention that x86-64 is getting annoys me to no end. Ideally, I would like my 64bit processor to be running 64bit code, no? We've been at this since the Atari Jaguar, right? And in theory, the less 32bit drivers and apps you use, the faster things will be (in practice the difference is negligible, but for power users its the thought that counts).

So the idea here is a simple benchmark, yet another number power users and companies alike can brag about to anybody and everybody. This would simply be the percentage of 64bit binaries on ones system, a higher percentage would be considered better than a lower. Accuracy past the decimal point is a nice thing folks could fight over as well (any benchmark needs a niggling point). This could be called a RU64 number.

Calculating the benchmark would be simple. The program simply needs to look at the headers of all the binaries on the system and check for 64 bittyness. The portable unix "file" utility is one example of a program that can do this. It would probably, then, be easy to knock out a proof of concept shell script using find, file, grep, and awk.