programing for 32 and 64 bit system.

Question

0.00/5 (No votes)

See more:

Dear Friends:

I am in the trenches of writing windows application program and I do not know how to include 32 and 64 bit system configuration in my program. I would be really happy if any one can help me to handle this challenge.

Warmly Regard.

Posted 18-Oct-11 9:22am

Mmohmmad

Add a Solution

2 solutions

Solution 2

In addition to the solution by Mehdi and important note by Simon:

You cannot mix up different instruction-set architectures in one process. Supported are two 64-bit instruction-set architectures: Itaniun (IA-64, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium[^];) and x86-64 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64[^]) as well as 32-bit (x86), which is provided on 64-bit versions of Windows via WoW64 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOW64[^]). Both 64-bit architecture are incompatible to each other, but x86 on each of 64 versions of Windows is the same, so it's often uses as a common denominator.

If you break this rule, it's worse than just incompatibility: the solution can be built but will crash during run time.

If at least one of the referenced assemblies uses different instruction-set architecture, it will also crash. AnyCPU is interesting: when all assemblies are targeted to AnyCPU, actual instruction-set architecture will be selected by OS, but if an entry assembly is targeted to specific instruction-set architecture, it will make the choice. This is very important feature helping to run and, say, test library assemblies for different machines.

—SA

Posted 18-Oct-11 11:25am

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov

Comments

Espen Harlinn 18-Oct-11 19:27pm

Good point :)

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 18-Oct-11 19:58pm

Thank you, Espen.
--SA

BillWoodruff 18-Oct-11 19:34pm

If you are implying that the OP has the option to compile for Itanium, I suggest you examine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium#Software_support

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 18-Oct-11 19:58pm

Does not really matter. You see, all of most of the software should be ready to run on any instruction-set architecture supported; the whole point of the answer by Mehdi and myself is being agnostic about the architecture.
--SA

Mehdi Gholam 19-Oct-11 2:20am

My 5! is anyone using ia64?

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 19-Oct-11 2:23am

Thank you, Mehdi.
Oh, sure we use them, I've used it a year ago or so, on a server machine and on an industrial PC. Why not?
--SA

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Mehdi Gholam · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-18T09:26:00

Solution 1

In .net if you go for the Any CPU you don't need to worry about 32 and 64 bit as your assembly will work with both and the runtime installed on your target system will do all the work.

Posted 18-Oct-11 9:26am

Mehdi Gholam

Comments

Simon Bang Terkildsen 18-Oct-11 15:34pm

My 5. You will run into problems though when you use native dlls, see Dealing With Native DLLs in .NET “AnyCPU” Builds for a way to deal with that problem.

Mehdi Gholam 18-Oct-11 15:43pm

Yep that is the only pain point.

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 18-Oct-11 17:26pm

This is extremely important point, Simon. However, there is a lot more to it.
Please see my answer.

Mehdi got my 4 this time.
--SA

Espen Harlinn 18-Oct-11 19:27pm

Nice reply :)

Mehdi Gholam 19-Oct-11 2:19am

Thanks Espen.

BillWoodruff 18-Oct-11 19:32pm

Mehdi's answer is +5 correct; it may interest you to read about the WOW64 technology: " ... the x86 emulator that allows 32-bit Windows-based applications to run seamlessly on 64-bit Windows." http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa384249(VS.85).aspx

Mehdi Gholam 19-Oct-11 2:19am

Thanks Bill.