When to use Eclipse 64 bit

Question

As far as I understand I can develop 32 or 64 bit applications from Eclipse 32 and Eclipse 64 bit. Is this correct? If so, what are the benefits of running Eclipse 64 bit on a 64 bit JRE?

I will mostly use the Python plugin PyDev to develop Python applications.

Answer 1

The benefits are an increase in available heap/memory.

The downside to the 64-bit JVM is a decrease in performance:

The performance difference comparing an application running on a 64-bit platform versus a 32-bit platform on SPARC is on the order of 10-20% degradation when you move to a 64-bit VM.

This hit to performance is apparently due to frequent use of 64-bit addresses for managing object references; moving twice the data than with 32-bit addresses.

Frankly, if you're not having problems with the restricted memory space, then you likely don't need to worry about it. You can go far with 32-bit JVM/Eclipse.

Answer 2

Any software 64 bit version is superior to 32 bit version in terms of memory addressing (also instruction set). This applies to Java and there fore to eclipse.

For running 64bit eclipse you will need 64bit jdk

Finally, 32bit JDK cannot have more than ~1.5GB of heap space for JVM argument -Xmx. However, 64bit supports much higher values.