pyprocessing/multiprocessing for x64?

[Christian Heimes]

Benjamin Kaplan wrote:
> I don't have a 64-bit machine, so I can only go off of what I read. This is
> from the AMD64 FAQ<http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_9331_13278,00.html#100144>

Welcome to the world of marketing. The FAQ just explains that AMD64 
compatible processors can still run 32bit programs. It doesn't say that 
you can recompile your code for 64bit w/o trouble.

It's possible to write software that compiles and works on all sorts of 
platforms and CPU architectures like X86, AMD64, IA64, PPC etc. The 
Python interpreter is a good example.

However one can easily write C code that runs on 32bit X86 CPUs but 
crashes on 64bit systems. The same code may run on a 64bit Linux/BSD 
system but crashes on a Win32 X64 because 64bit Windows defines a long 
as a 32bit datatype, while a long on 64bit Unix systems has 64bits.

Christian