64 bit version?

[Gremlin]

Well, "extra" may be an understatement from what i've heard, these processors offer over a 200% increase? due to their superior architecture and the fact that they have 64-bit processing....

it would be smart for alias to move in this direction, but, who knows how much mone/time that would take to reprogram the thing to take advantage of 64-bit, cause you know one wants a 25% enhancement from those $700 processors... even though thats great, we want a full integration.

[elektronaut]

i guess this 64bit thing will come in the follower 3d app from alias.
it would be too much work to reprogram the 32bit maya version.
so i think we have to wait ;)

marco.

[Maarc]

Maya's System Requirements page mentions that it can run on SGI® IRIX® 6.2.15. I don't know the version history, but the latest version (6.5) is for a 64 bit platform. If 6.2 was 64 bit, then I'd argue that the Maya source base is already 64 bit clean. I imagine that they use a largely common source between each of the different platforms, with specialisations for platform specific issues and performance critical code.

Even if it is 64 bit clean, that doesn't mean that it would be an easy release. The largest amount of time would be spent in validation and testing on a new platform. Also, Windows does not have a 64 bit version for AMD yet (only in beta) though Linux does, I believe. And validation and testing would require a stable platform to run upon.

As far as performance improvements go, it depends on the compilers used and other things. The architecture can support more than 4GB of memory, and has a much lower memory latency, making memory accesses faster. The AMD64 architecture has double the number of general purpose registers and floating point registers in SSE2 (which is required in 64 bit mode). And anything that would use 64 bit integers (Maya is unlikely to use it) would be significantly sped up.

But 200% isn't likely, I would expect. Improvements would depend largely on where the bottle necks are in the code.

All this is moot if it isn't 64 bit clean, however. That would involve redoing parts of their code to ensure 64 bit cleanliness, and then the testing/validation would begin.

[Tolerate]

My understanding was that the latest versions of Irix were 64-bit too.

I think it will take at least a couple of years before a 64-bit Windows version is released. We have more chance of a full feature supporting MR before that happens hehe

[CIM]

Alias has had a 64-bit ready version of Maya for years now (before version 4.0).

[martinw]

Awesome amount of misinformation in the above replies. To address a few:

Gremlin: 64 bit processors are *not* 200% faster than 32 bit processors. Search for reviews at places like tomshardware.com or anandtech.com for some performance comparisons. The speed depends on the processor architecture, not the number of bits. And 64 bit processors are available for a lot less than $700 - try $200 as the entry level price...

elektronaut: It is significant effort to convert an application to 64 bits, but it is not so much work that it is necessary to write a new app from scratch rather than convert the existing one.

Maarc: Just because IRIX is a 64 bit OS does not mean that any app running on IRIX is 64-bit clean. IRIX runs both 32 bit and 64 bit apps.

Tolerate: It will be a *lot* less than 2 years before 64-bit Windows is available. In fact 64-bit Windows for Itanium has been out for a while already. The AMD64 version is due later this year.

CIM: Maya is not currently 64 bit.

In response to the original post, it is simply down to customer demand that determines when companies will release 64 bit versions of software. It is a significant effort to convert an app to be 64-bit clean, so it basically depends on having enough customers asking for it (and of course being willing to pay for it.) So if you want it, you know what to do. :)

[Tolerate]

Sorry if i wasn't clear, i meant a 64-bit Windows version of Maya, not a 64-bit version of Windows

Thanks for the reply anyway

[Gremlin]

Well obviously i'm not up to date... and must have been misinformed, or possibly it was just a specific application that recieved that 200% performance bonus, either way... I don't know one, and Maya is 64-bit, so... who cares! :surprised

[martinw]

Originally posted by Tolerate
Sorry if i wasn't clear, i meant a 64-bit Windows version of Maya, not a 64-bit version of Windows

Ah, I see. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

[matty429]

32 bit vs. 64 bit (http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1884&p=17)

Try 50% at best.
10% to 30% on an average

[playmesumch00ns]

Ahh true, but just meausring CPU performance doesn't really give a true picture of the benefits of working on a 64-bit system.

For a start, double-precision operations are cheaper. Which is good for 3d.

Most importantly, there is no longer a 2GB effective limit on the amount of memory you address. For all intents and purposes, the only limit on your RAM is how much you can physically fit in the machine, and how much you can afford.

So if you're doing renders that won't fit in 2GB and consequently are trashing like mad, you can expect to see a huge increase (we're talking orders of magnitude) in your render speeds.

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