64-bits

[Carlo Hogeveen]

Taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture,

I learned about the amazingly reduced energy requirements of ARM chips, and how even Windows 11 can now run on ARM chips and can
effectively emulate 64-bit x86 applications.
Reduced energy means reduced cost and means laptops' charges lasting longer.
This seems a big deal, and might accelerate killing 32-bit support.
Windows 10 support ending this October will accelerate people looking for new computers.

The topic of a 64-bits version of TSE is years old.
In TSE v4.50.2 (11 Jan 2025) the read.me of releases started containing a roadmap with steps toward a 64-bits TSE.
In TSE v4.50.6 (24 May 2025) that roadmap is unchanged.

I spend a lot of time nitpicking on and contributing to TSE, but this bigger picture is outside of my control.
On the one hand I am not looking forward to the day that I am going to lose TSE and my customizations.
On the other hand change is inevitable and making big changes :-) and learning new things is fun.

Now standing a step back,
Carlo

[knud van eeden]

That will assumed never happen or be experienced at all is the current assumption.

Those ARM chips are not dominating the PC market first and for all.

The Intel chips are dominating the PC market.

So one buys Intel chip PCs when replacing instead.

Microsoft Windows (11, 12, 13, 14, 15, ..., N) should continue to support 32-bits for long in the future is assumed.

Continued update support for e.g. Microsoft Windows 10 can be bought e.g. after 25 October 2025 and that will maybe continue

for 10 years or more from now. 

So then one simply buys such a paid subscription Microsoft 10 or higher as a workaround.

General workaround in case of: 32 bits Virtual Machine

Those 32-bits Virtual Machines (VMWare, Oracle Virtual Box, ...) can then be installed as a workaround on your 64 bits 

or 128 bits or 256 bits or higher PC machines and in there one runs the TSE 32-bits.

Maybe one can run 32 bits TSE for Linux on some 32 bits Linux distributions for a long time forward to come. One can find TSE program Microsoft Windows to Linux workarounds for almost anything if necessary.

And of course there might arrive a 64-bits version of TSE some time.........

And so on..., bottom line, no worries ;-)

Maybe 50 years from now otherwise ;-)

with friendly greetings

Knud van Eeden

On Monday, May 26, 2025 at 04:17:46 PM GMT+2, Knud van Eeden <knud.va...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Howard Kapustein]

Windows *the OS* dropped 32bit support in Win11 (4? years back) - notice there is no Win11 x86 OS image, just x64 (and ARM64). But Windows (continues) supporting 32bit applications, and ARM64 supports arm64, x64 and x86 applications - the x86/x64 through some pretty nifty emulation and other games. A Windows ARM64 laptop is impressive - ARM64 is known for high performance and efficient power usage, and Windows supports it well. The ecosystem is chock full of x86 apps, and don't forget many vertical and in-house / enterprise applications, not all of which may be under active (or any) development. The stories of apps whose source code can't be rebuilt or even found isn't just a myth to scare children around the campfire :-) Windows is big on compatibility. I have no special knowledge other than decades of industry experience, but I expect Microsoft will continue supporting x86 + x64 binaries for a long time to come. Cutting that support would amount to cutting their own throat - and they know it.

Applications benefit recompiling for ARM64 - I've heard of large apps like Word and the like recompiled for arm64 and even arm64ec and see significant performance improvements, and power efficiency games aren't unusual. If your application uses significant horsepower then recompiling for arm64 is usually a noticeable win. There may be some memory savings too.

But...TSE isn't exactly a CPU burner, nor a memory pig. While it would be nice for TSE to be a native ARM64 binary there's no risk of being unable to run existing TSE binaries for many moons to come.

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[Rick Hodgin]

Microsoft only dropped 32-bit-only support (meaning no 32-bit only versions of the OS).  16-bit and 32-bit are still supported by the CPUs, just the OS limits which features of the CPU it supports to a 64-bit kernel with 32-bit app support.

You would think with Microsoft's movement to AI, they would have AIs working on supporting all hardware natively.

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Rick C. Hodgin

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[Howard Kapustein]

>You would think with Microsoft's movement to AI, they would have AIs working on supporting all hardware natively.

When's the last time an x86 chip was manufactured w/o x64 support?

The OS running 64bit has benefits even if every process is x86 Win32, starting with...want more than 3.2GB physical RAM to be usable by the OS? Additional benefits accrue quickly as you build most of the OS itself for Win64, be it more efficient cpu instructions and compiler codegen targeting x64 rather than merely x86, available RAM used as a dynamically sized disk cache, yadda yadda.

I see little value in the OS being 32bit, unless you're targeting low end hardware for more focused use aka the embedded world. Then yes, fixed function devices with less need for the larger silicon and features can benefit from reduced COGS. But 32bit *apps* are hugely popular, and no doubt will be for decades to come, 'cause, compat.

DOS support via NTVDM was dropped recently as that market was nigh zero, and hardware's way past fast enough a Win32 app emulating DOS is plenty effective when needed.

Regardless, I see no problem running TSE on Windows for decades to come, even if Sammy never made another update (but do please keep at it! :-)

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[Rick Hodgin]

32-bit CPUs, including 64-bit CPUs running in 32-bit mode only, support up to 64 GB of RAM, and a full 4 GB per process.

It's Windows design limitations that prevent it from being seen in most 32-bit apps.

The CPUs we use in Windows are far more capable than we see in Win32/64 APIs.

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Rick C. Hodgin

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