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The short answer is yes, 64-bit operating systems almost always require more RAM than corresponding 32-bit operating systems and 64-bit applications often do require a bit more RAM than corresponding 32-bit applications.
The theoretical memory limit that a 64-bit computer can address is about 16 exabytes (16 billion gigabytes), Windows XP x64 is currently limited to 128 GB of physical memory and 8 TB of virtual memory.
The 2 GB limit refers to a physical memory barrier for a process running on a 32-bit operating system, which can only use a maximum of 2 GB of memory.
One of the simplest ways to increase the amount of memory a process can use on 32-bit Windows is to enable the /3GB flag in the Windows' boot. ini file. This has the effect of adjusting the kernel/user address space split in favour of the application by 1GB, i.e. instead of a 2GB/2GB split you have a 3GB/1GB split.
When moving an application from 32bit to 64bit, where will increased memory usage occur?
I understand that pointers will double in size, I suspect that the chars in a string are 'bunched' to use memory more efficiently (so will not use much more memory).
Where else would memory usage increase? Is there anywhere that it would decrease, or where non-arithmetic operations would see a speed benefit?
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