What is the difference between a 32 bit and a 64 bit download file?
In: Technology
Each file is designed for use with the corresponding operating system architecture.
What the heck does that mean?
The number of bits to your OS is essentially the width of the pipeline that carries the “Stuff” the computer does at any given time.
If computers aren’t your thing, think about video game systems.
Original NES was an 8bit system. That means the bones and brains of the NES itself was capable of processing 8 bits of data (e.g. 01001011) per each clock cycle of it’s processor. Of course to make things go faster one can increase the clock speed of a processor, but at some point you run into heat problems going too fast, so instead, technology advanced to simply run double the “stuff” at once, hence the birth of 16 bit architecture. This meant with the same speed of processor you could DOUBLE the amount of data you could process at once, effectively speeding up the processor’s computing power.
Of course in order to leverage this new hardware technology, files needed to take advantage of this, and thus were coded differently to break up their pieces into larger individual chunks. A 64 bit system can still use 32 bit files, just utilizing half of the pipeline with each clock cycle. (Using 32 bit files in a 64 bit system you can’t just take two chunks at once just because it has the room for it, it still only handles one chunk at a time.) This is why in Microsoft Windows you’ll have a “Program Files” and “Program Files (x86)” folder (the x86 refers to the old 32 bit windows architecture and is where modern 64 bit Windows systems store 32bit applications.)
But the opposite is not true, a 32 bit system cannot handle a 64 bit file, cause each chunk is twice as big as the system can handle, and you can’t do much with half a chunk, as it loses its meaning in machine speak.
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