I can remember when Intel's 4 bit 4004 "CPU on a chip" came out and blew all our minds. When they released the 8 bit 8008 I thought "Now they're just showing off..."

Errata: There is a typo on one of my slides. 2013 should be 2003. The AMD Opteron came out in spring 2003, the Athlon 64 in the autumn of the same year.

I'm devastated I'm no longer restricted to 4GB of RAM 😭😭😭

I think by 2038 then 32bit will be truly dead

Risc-V Still has 16 bit compressed instructions, and unlike Thumb, doesn't require a mode switch within the processor.

anybody still remember using the PAE switch on servers to allow Windows to see more memory :D

I'm still running 32bit Linux on my old 32bit computers, that are still capable for many sorts of tasks.

I’m glad you added the ‘exception’ for embedded applications, albeit a rather briefly noted exception given the extraordinary spread of embedded microcontrollers in the past decade of the rise of IoT. The demise of 8bit microcontrollers has been predicted for 20 years, still hasn’t happened. 16bit MCUs were somewhat rarer, with MCUs targeting embedded applications jumping instead to 32bits. Most embedded applications will never need 64bits, but more to the point, are often subject to economic pressures where SoC silicon die size becomes relevant to the cost of the final product, so would be disadvantageous if lumbered with an un-used 64-bit capability. Of course, s/w dev tools support for 32bits given this desertion of support from the application devs for 64-bit only will be “interesting”; in the transitions from 8 to 16, and 16 to 32, embedded developers have often been second class citizens in the s/w dev tools quality, and it’s hard not to see that paradigm continuing afresh with this 64-bit “chauvinism” ;-)

Quick! Someone inform Valve

Well Gaben better get going with releasing 64bit client of Steam.

hidden secret in the 32bit binary number is DEADBEEF lol you're amazing bro

I also worked for DEC in 1990. I recall the boss of DEC was Ken Olsen who famously said that we should carry on building VAX and Alpha because PCs would never catch on 😀

I imagine for me the only issue I'll run into when 32bit support is lost on PCs and Ubuntu is with older 32bit games

Speaking of 64-bit ARM, I think you would be the perfect person to make a video explaining Fujitsu's A64FX ARM SoC developed for their Japanese K super computer. It has an architecture that's quite different from other SoCs I've seen.

I found the DEADBEEF quite fun lol interesting video

2:35 the easter egg is that the binary there says D E A D B E E F

The x86-64 will always be there to support older 32-bit code, simply because this ISA is strictly an inclusive extension of the x86 (i686), by using modified Physical Address Extension, featured way back in the Pentium Pro that enabled 36-bit address range. That's why all x86-64 OS do require PAE support from the host CPU.

I still have not come to terms with the loss of 16-bit computing. Now this.. Oh my.

Now to release 128-bits hardware so that we can happily perpetuate having two architectures.

The Most Anticipated Video of 2021. I am ready with my coffee and piece of cake to start watching the video. Let's go!

Me, making drivers for 32-bit ARM: 👀

Excellent informative overview of past present future architectures. With so many variants, no wonder companies eventually cut off support for obsolete architectures. I suspect Huawei’s new operating system designed for controlling/interfacing all kinds of devices/appliances will be well served with an additional dedicated 32 bit processor optimized for such functions and a few other overhead functions. ps ... I have the Intel catalog that includes 4004, 8008, 8080 processors, 64 bit memory chips up to 4k dram memory chips. Back in the days when every transistor was highly valued. And my Mostek memory chip catalog provided insight into failure modes and how shake & bake testing, burn in (and more) provided reliability.

I still use some 16 bit controllers, long live 32 bit embedded! [I forgot I still teach on the arduino uno, atmega328 is 8-bit. Yes you did point out you are not talking about micro controllers... well great video thanks.]

The knowledge of this video is deep. I thought that it would be a simple explanation what processor is 32 bit and what is 64 bit, and here it is.. it's not as simple at it seems.. and this shows how apple who control the hardware and software directly can go without much problem with its compatibility.

The only downside of this is support of legacy apps, but those will undoubtedly be supported via emulators or virtual machines, at least on a desktop OS.

Strangely X86 even supports not just one, but two distinct 16 bit modes (the original 8086 'real mode' and 286 'protected mode') at the OS level to this date. I wonder how long it will take them to get rid of that.

DEC Alpha was storming technology in every way...I still can’t comprehend Ken Olsen’s response to the UNX/Open Standards zeitgeist

In the embedded world, 32 bit will remain alive for the foreseeable future. For PowerPC, the 32 and 64 bit instructions are both part of the same ISA. I started my career at DEC back in 1981.

The 68000 actually had 3 16 bit ALUs (though only one had the complete set of operations and the other two were mostly adders) so it could crunch 48 bits per clock

Also, back in the day 8080 processor was 8-bit & 8-bit 8051 micro-controller is still used for projects till today...

Not so long ago that being less than 12 years ago where I worked, we still used these huge old Sun Microsystems computers in the server room. These servers were well over 20 years old and kept going due to proprietary software running on them. Only just prior to my retirement were the computers retired. I wonder if the SPARK systems are still being used but I doubt it.

Out of curiosity; if the x86 families of chips drops the 32bit part and goes all 64bit, does that mean that then everyone can start making x86_64 chips? (IF AMD allows it as they made the 64bit instruction set?). And Intels part of it is no longer present

I have a 16 year old laptop with LMDE running on it with 2 gigs of ram runs great.

It's not dead, it's resting.

Well 32 bit computing is still alive on my Windows XP retro PC.So definitely not dead for me yet.

15:03 and thus AMD owns the patents or some other IP on it as well. As I understand it: Intel and AMD had to cross-license, 32-bit from Intel and 64-bit from AMD.

wdym , my pavilion dv4000 is still running on the latest version of Debian with all server related packages

Amazing video Gary. Great in depth information.

I started with 32-bit computers in 1969 for the Prototype Test Department of the Dutch multi-national Philips. The instruction set was 32-bits. The top model had a 32-bit arithmetic unit, the mid-range model had a 16-bit arithmetic unit and the cheapest model a 8-bit arithmetic unit. The maximum core memory (1MHz) for the models was respectively 512KB; 256KB and 64KB. On top of the main memory you could add one or more 2MB mass memory cabinets (3m long, 1m wide and 2m high) running at 400KHz. Disk unit sizes were 7.25; 30 or 60MB. Prices started at say $500,000, based on the current dfl -> euro -> dollar values. My modest 2019 64-bits Ryzen has not KB, not MB but 16GB of memory (3.0GHz) and not MB nor GB, but 2TB of storage and I paid a whopping $349 :) Bob Dylan has been right: "The Times They Are A-Changin".

X86_64 is 2003 not 2013

I think they should have done this way before, but I'm really glad they are doing it right now.

we all need a 64-bit OS these days because the foot print of apps we're running long ago blew 4Gb address space, and 16GB is a baseline computer. But most users would be able to get by with 32-bit apps. Gamers, image, video, database uses being some of the address space voracious workloads that are the exceptions

16:40 slight misspeak here, AArch32 apps do run fine on Windows 10 on ARM and you can still build for AArch32 from Visual Studio. Interestingly though, the ClangCL toolset in Visual Studio recently got AArch64 support but not AArch32 support, which hints that perhaps Microsoft wants to stop supporting AArch32 builds.

Why is there such a push to get rid of the compatibility with 32bit? Is there any disadvantage to having legacy support for it?

Thank you for being my shoulder to cry on, Gary!

It'd be cool to know why 64bit only. Also, the benefits and risks of dropping all the legacy stuff out of silicon., As well as why 128bit may or may never be a thing. I also saw something interesting about trinary processing over the binary processing that we all know. Might be an interesting topic too.

As far as I remember, the first x64-based AMD CPU was already available in 2003 and not in 2013.

Will we ever see 128 bit OS and Processors? And if they will come then what performance gains will those bring?

I started my studies to become an engineer (EE) in 1978 ... the year Intel introduced its 8086 (16bit), the beginning of the CISC-story called x86 ... Back then my favorite CPU was the Z80 (Zilog) because it had a double set of registers for dynamic context switching ... and Motorola's 68000 (32bit!) wasn't still there ... ;-) ... what a wild ride to todays 64-bit RISC state-of-the-art CPUs ... still ARM based ... ;-)

Motion blur in pointer?? AMAGING!!

Correction: Windows on Arm does run AArch32 apps. I've done so with CrystalDiskMark that has all four architectures.

For my current-gen pc i dropped 32-bit 5 years ago, and never 2 cores, always 4 or higher. All of my retro stuff, pc and games....still running 8 untill 32 bit with pleasure😀. I actually recently upgraded a 12-year old DELL desktop from vista 32 to windows 7 64, + CPU and GPU upgraded. Runs current stuff like butter!

Using all apple processor plus points Can any company make faster processor like or than apple??? Please answer sir

Still using my RK3288 based Tinkerboard S on 32-bits. Working fine.

15:01 i'm pretty sure that the first 64 bit AMD64 CPU was the Athlon 64 in 2003, but i'm not sure if it is fully 64 bit or a sort of 32 bit with some 64 bit capabilities. Intel later added support for 64 bit with EM64T for all socket T (LGA 775) Pentium 4s, but i absolutely don't know what that technology consist of, i only know that with my 32 bit EM64T capable Atom CPU i can run 64 bit operating systems and 64 bit apps.

I'm honestly surprised 32-bit has lasted as long as it did!back in 2008, I remember feeling so bada** just graduating to 64-bit! I would have expected 32 to be phased out in the 2010's entirely. I still have my 2007 32-bit only laptop and it still works to this day! It's only used once in a blue as a sort of throwback/retro machine! And now... It's time for them 128-bit CPU's come to be...

What exactly is the reason behind some ARM cores disabling support 32-bit code? The x86 world keeps backwards support for 32-bit and even some 16-bit code forever. How much extra effort is required?

128-bits asap 😊

do I have to change my handle?

Thanks for this video 👍🏻👌🏻✌🏻

Can you get into freebsd or openbsd alternative systems?

Would be interesting to know when the 128bit or higher processors will be like ;)

RIP 32bit.. Did anyone really need more than 4 gigs of ram? I mean yeah, but still. Thank you for your service 32bit, you were amazing

I just installed OpenBSD 6.9 i386 on one of my firewall computers, I'm going to install it on two of my other firewall computers when their SSDs arrive. I also installed OpenBSD 6.9 amd64 on two of my other firewall computers, I'm going to do my other firewall computer when I get around to it. Of course those are all computers not toys.

Wasn't the Athlon 64 from 2003 first x86-64 CPU?

This is crazy, I thought searching this 16 hours later it's release.

Very informative mate!

Question: Will this trend continue? Will processors become 128->256->512 bit eventually or are there any diminishing returns?

Thats what i call DEAD BEEF. :D

Opteron was shown on a slide as 2013. I had Athlon X2 64bit in 2007 so I think 2003 was meant.

Great video Gary! Really informative

Forcing 64 bit is actually *still* a big deal for embedded applications where memory is often constrained and 512MB of RAM is luxurious.

The 68000, Pentium Pro, and 386sx aren't any kind of exceptions at all. The whole point of having an ISA (an Instruction Set Architecture) is that you can design and market a wide range of processor designs -- whether at the same time, or over time -- that all run exactly the same programs. M68k and i386 are 32 bit ISAs, no question at all about it. Any CPU that runs M68k or i386 or ARM or Thumb programs is a 32 bit CPU, regardless of what size the instructions, ALU, address bus, or data bus are. ARM took off in mobile devices because the ARM7TDMI was able to run on a 16 bit bus with no cache -- and the 32 bit Thumb ISA made it efficient to do so. It's really about time ARM dropped 32 bit from new designs. Apple went 64-bit only back in iPhone 8 days (September 2017).

we still run 24Bit programms from the 70's, normally 31Bit and some 64Bit programms on the newest mainframe.

The transition to 64 bit only iOS didn’t go smoothly at all for me. I had an old version of Autodesk Sketchbook which I couldn’t access alongside with all my sketches. I also had an old obscure app which I really liked, that wasn’t ported, and I couldn’t run anymore.

I feel odd how 32 bit. There are small board support older 8,16 bit micro chips. What about the small boards cpu. Like some open hardware or DIY hobbies. But not sure there different in cost.

The intro, classic!

32-bit is still used everywhere like in embedded systems with stuff like STM32 (Arm Cortex-M) and some stuff like the tinySA, NanoVNA and some other stuff

How long before x86 goes 64 bit only with 16 and 32 bit support done by BIOS level emulation or a tiny 32 bit core? If they take the route of using a tiny 32 bit core (e.g. Quark), that core can be repurposed for stuff like power management once the CPU is in 64 bit mode.

I'm completely lost on the naming schemes

Great introduction to said goodbye for an old friend. If iwere human, I would cry, but i am a IT speciallist and we do not cry, we blame IT Security officials. Best regards from Spain, and a glass of Pedro Ximenez in your name.

Easter at Gary's house: Easter eggs containing dead beef!

great survey of the market. thanks!

before checking that number only thought in my head was "it's probably 0xdeadbeef"

I've been writing my own 32bit os for the last 10 years. What do I do now?

I started on 6809 and then 68000. 68k.. I thought wow 32bits and 24bit address range.. And here we are..

I'm not sad or devastated by the loss of 32 bit, just very annoyed that currently supported OSs can only run on my absolutely newest desktop. I have 2 or 3 perfectly good desktops that are only 32-bit and would hate to trash them because big tech doesn't have a clue what decent (let alone good) legacy support looks like. Thank god for the people that make Q4os, the OS runs great on those computers

What is the functional advantage of having 64 bit versions of small apps like Sticky notes etc (from the application's perspective)? They might not be able to utilize the 64 bit ISA fully.

We need to build truly 64bit systems - too many agents and software still use 32bit. We want them gone, and then all the legacy compatibility 32bit logic taken out of the CPUs (Intel/AMD). Probably take another 5 years.

Thanks for such historical lesson!

Speaking of which….any predictions as to when 128 bit will become mainstream, if ever?

I started with TMS1000 4-bit

2:39 "Get DEADBEEF in Hex upon conversation, 😂"

Love you Gary.

Was involved in a DEC vax to alpha migration in mid to late 80s - could not understand why people didn’t want all that addressable memory especially for databases. Could not believe the lack of vision from DEC going with intels ever diminishing promises of Itanium.. Then involved in going x64 on AMD in the early to mid 2000s. Frustration with the raspberry pi initially was once again the lack of RAM - not entirely surprising given its power envelope, but good to see the restrictions disappearing. Yet we still see too many people running office 365 x32 as x64 had issues with 3rd party apps - and hitting memory issues with excel

At least ARM can do that. Especially since there's less expectation of backwards compatibility. Consumers on x86-64 expect backwards compatibility going back decades. Especially Windows users, but even in Linux a small but vocal section of the community throws tantrums when you tell them they can't run the latest and greatest distro release on their 20yo Pentiums. Even myself, I'd be somewhat upset if I suddenly couldn't play a lot of my games anymore. But at least I can accept that at some point you just gotta move on.

No !! just resurrected a netbook using suse tumbleweed linux 32 bit using btrfs.... Runs simply lovely ! 😇

1/2 of the software I use are in 32 bit. How about that? This will take time, many years that we will slowly see the 32 bit applications gone or maybe not.

Gary. Take the commas out of the number and you'll have more room for the numbers.

What does this mean for x86 emulation/translation on Windows for ARM?