SWI-Prolog 5.6.53 Reference Manual: Section 2.19

## 2.19 SWI-Prolog and 64-bit machines

SWI-Prolog support for 64-bit12With 64-bit machines we refer to CPUs where memory-addresses (pointers) are 64-bits wide. machines started with version 2.8 on DEC Alpha CPUs running Linux. Initially 64-bit hardware was developed to deal with the addressing demands of large databases, running primarily on expensive server hardware. Recently (2007) we see CPUs that support 64-bit addressing become commonplace, even in low-budget desktop hardware. Most todays 64-bit platforms are capable of running both 32-bit and 64-bit applications. This asks for some clarifications on the advantages and drawbacks of 64-bit addressing for (SWI-)Prolog.

### 2.19.1 Supported platforms

On Unix systems, 64-bit addressing is configured using configure. Traditionally, both `long` and `void*` are 64-bits on these machines. Version 5.6.26 introduces support for 64-bit MS-Windows (Windows XP and Vista 64-bit editions) on amd64 (x64) hardware. Win64 uses `long` integers of only 32-bits. Version 5.6.26 introduces support for such platforms.

### 2.19.2 Comparing 32- and 64-bits Prolog

Most of Prolog's memory-usage consists of pointers. This indicates the primary drawback: Prolog memory usage almost doubles when using the 64 bit addressing model. Using more memory means copying more data between CPU and main memory, slowing down the system.

What than are the advantages? First of all, SWI-Prolog's addressing of the Prolog stacks does not cover the whole address space due to the use of type tag bits and garbage collection flags. On 32-bit hardware the stacks are limited to 128MB each. This tends to be too low for demanding applications on modern hardware. On 64-bit hardware the limit is 2^32 times higher, exceeding the addressing capabilities of todays CPUs and operating systems. This implies Prolog can be started with stacks sizes that use the full capabilities of your hardware.

Multi-threaded applications profit much more. SWI-Prolog threads claim the full stacksize limit in virtual address space and each thread comes with its own set of stacks. This approach quickly exhaust virtual memory on 32-bit systems but poses no problems when using 64-bit addresses.

The implications theoretical performance loss due to increased memory bandwidth implied by exchanging wider pointers depend on the design of the hardware. We only have data for the popular IA32 vs. AMD64 architectures. Here is appears that the loss is compensated for by a an instruction set that has been optimized for modern programming. In particular, the AMD64 has more registers and the relative addressing capabilities have been improved. Where we see a 10% performance degradation when placing the SWI-Prolog kernel in a Unix shared object, we cannot find a measurable difference on AMD64. Current SWI-Prolog (5.6.26) runs at practically the same speed on IA32 and AMD64.

### 2.19.3 Choosing between 32- and 64-bits Prolog

For those cases where we can choose between 32- and 64-bits, either because the hardware and OS support both or because we can still choose the hardware and OS, we give guidelines for this decision.

First of all, if SWI-Prolog needs to be linked against 32- or 64-bit native libraries, there is no choice as it is not possible to link 32- and 64-bit code into a single executable. Only if all required libraries are available in both sizes and there is no clear reason to use either the different characteristics of Prolog become important.

Prolog applications that require more than the 128MB stack limit provided in 32-bit addressing mode must use the 64-bit edition. Note however that the limits must be doubled to accommodate the same Prolog application.

If the system is tight on physical memory, 32-bit Prolog has the clear advantage to use only slightly more than half of the memory of 64-bit Prolog. This argument applies as long as the application fits in the virtual address space of the machine. The virtual address space of 32-bit hardware is 4GB, but in many cases the operating system provides less to user applications. Virtual memory usage of SWI-Prolog is roughly the program size (heap) plus the sum of the stack-limits. If there are multiple threads, each thread has its own stacks and the stack-limits must be summed over the running threads.

The only standard SWI-Prolog library adding significantly to this calculation is the RDF database provided by the semweb package. It uses approximately 80 bytes per triple on 32-bit hardware and 150 bytes on 64-bit hardware. Details depend on how many different resources and literals appear in the dataset as well as desired additional literal indexes.

Summarizing, if applications are small enough to fit comfortably in virtual and physical memory simply take the model used by most of the applications on the OS. If applications require more than 128MB per stack, use the 64-bit edition. If applications approach the size of physical memory, fit in the 128MB stack limit and fit in virtual memory, the 32-bit version has clear advantages. For demanding applications on 64-bit hardware with more than about 6GB physical memory the 64-bit model is the model of choice.