When your CPU is 32Bit and you try to boot a 64Bit OS / load a 64Bit program, it will crash/panic/segfault, it won’t boot beyond the grub boot selection screen.
“Ben Hutchings (blog) a Debian developer and Linux kernel maintainer, has announced that Debian operating system is now dropping support for OLDER 32-bit hardware architecture.
This decision to drop the support for hybrid i586/i686 and i586 processors from Debian 9.0 was taken last year due to the recent GNU Compiler Collection releases which only focus i686-class processors. It should be noted that Debian 9.0 “Stretch” operating system is currently under heavy development.
In the official announcement, Ben Hutchings said — “gcc for i386 has recently been changed to target 686-class processors and is generating code that will crash on other processors. Any such systems still running testing or unstable will need to be switched to run stable (Jessie).”
src: fossbytes.com
List of 64-bit processors: Intel 64 – Core microarchitecture
src: wikipedia.org
rough overview: Core Duo (80539) = 32Bit, Core 2 (Duo) is a 64-bit processor, supporting Intel 64
there are massive amounts of variations.
“With the release of the Core 2 processor, the abbreviation C2 has come into common use, with its variants C2D (the present Core 2 Duo), and C2Q, C2E to refer to the Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Extreme processors respectively. C2QX stands for the Extreme-Editions of the Quad (QX6700, QX6800, QX6850).
The successors to the Core 2 brand are a set of Nehalem microarchitecture based processors called Core i3, i5, and i7.” (src: wikipedia.org)
“The first Intel mobile processor implementing Intel 64 is the Merom version of the Core 2 processor, which was released on July 27, 2006.
None of Intel’s earlier notebook CPUs (Core Duo, Pentium M, Celeron M, Mobile Pentium 4) implement Intel 64.” (src: wikipedia.org)
Processor | 32-bit or 64-bit |
---|---|
Intel Core Duo or Solo | 32-bit |
Intel Core 2 Duo | 64-bit |
Any Intel Xeon processor | 64-bit |
Intel Core i3 | 64-bit |
Intel Core i5 | 64-bit |
Intel Core i7 | 64-bit |
As seen in the above chart all of the most recent Mac computers are 64-bit processors.
is your CPU 32Bit or 64Bit? – watch the “lm” flag
32Bit OS (and even drivers?) can run on 64Bit CPU, but 64Bit OS can only on 64Bit CPU.
on the Linux operating system, access the command line interface and enter the following command:
# or more colorful grep --color flags /proc/cpuinfo|grep --color lm flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm cpuid_fault epb invpcid_single pti tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid xsaveopt dtherm ida arat pln pts
# Look for lm in the command output. # If lm is found in the output, then the CPU is 64-bit capable.
If you don’t see lm or see i386, i486, i586, or i686 in the output, then the CPU is 32-bit. Below is an example output of the above line with lm in the information.
flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good pni monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr sse4_1 lahf_lm
src: computerhope.com
- lm flag means Long mode cpu – 64 bit CPU
- Real mode 16 bit CPU
- Protected Mode is 32-bit CPU
not valid method:
# will return 32, when 32Bit OS is running on 64Bit CPU
getconf LONG_BIT
more info about the CPU:
# general info about the CPU (Model current Clock etc.) cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 69 model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4200U CPU @ 1.60GHz stepping : 1 microcode : 0x20 cpu MHz : 1128.473 cache size : 3072 KB physical id : 0 siblings : 4 core id : 0 cpu cores : 2 apicid : 0 initial apicid : 0 fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 13 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm cpuid_fault epb invpcid_single pti tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid xsaveopt dtherm ida arat pln pts # will even tell one if cpu is vulnerable to sidechannel attacks such as: meltdown and spectre v1 and v2 bugs : cpu_meltdown spectre_v1 spectre_v2 bogomips : 4589.57 clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 39 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: # alternative: lscpu Architecture: x86_64 CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit Byte Order: Little Endian CPU(s): 4 On-line CPU(s) list: 0-3 Thread(s) per core: 2 Core(s) per socket: 2 Socket(s): 1 NUMA node(s): 1 Vendor ID: GenuineIntel CPU family: 6 Model: 69 Model name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4200U CPU @ 1.60GHz Stepping: 1 CPU MHz: 1596.535 CPU max MHz: 2600.0000 CPU min MHz: 800.0000 BogoMIPS: 4589.57 Virtualization: VT-x L1d cache: 32K L1i cache: 32K L2 cache: 256K L3 cache: 3072K NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0-3 Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc cpuid aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm cpuid_fault epb invpcid_single pti tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid xsaveopt dtherm ida arat pln pts
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