How to develop to take advantage of 64 bit systems?

Question

Is there any specific sectors of Software Engineer/Computer Science where there's a marked difference when developing for 64 bit systems? I've been coding for around 10 years now, and since the break of 64 bit systems, my code hasn't changed one bit.

What applications that a single coder can code as a side project require you to use 64 bit technology?

Answer 1

Anything that requires more than 4 GB of working and program memory would certainly qualify, since that is the maximum amount of memory that a 32 bit system can address directly.

Since 64 bit numbers can reside in the CPU registers, calculations requiring numbers of these sizes would see a performance improvement.