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Date: Mon, 05 Aug 2024 14:54:39 +0200
From: "Joel Jacobson" <joel@compiler.org>
To: "Aleksander Alekseev" <aleksander@timescale.com>,
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Subject: Re: Is *fast* 32-bit support still important?
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On Mon, Aug 5, 2024, at 14:24, Aleksander Alekseev wrote:
>> Could we add a text message that is displayed to a user,
>> when compiling PostgreSQL on a 32-bit platform?
>
> What would be actionable items depending on the results? Option A:
> someone claims to use PostgreSQL on 32-bit hardware. Option B: no one
> admits that they use PostgreSQL on 32-bit hardware (but maybe someone
> actually does and/or will in the future). Regardless of the results
> you can't drop the support of 32-bit software (until it gets as
> difficult and pointless as with AIX that was dropped recently) and it
> will not tell you how slow the 32-bit version of PostgreSQL can be.
>
> If there are no actionable items why create a poll?

Never suggested *dropping* 32-bit support; that's a different question.

However, if we were to receive input from 32-bit PostgreSQL users explaining
why they need *high performance*, then I imagine that could affect how we
feel about 32-bit optimizations.

Right now, there doesn't seem to be a consensus on whether we should optimize
for 32-bit or not.

On the one hand, we have commit 5e1f3b9 that says:
"While it adds some space on 32-bit machines, we aren't optimizing
for that case anymore."

On the other hand, we have the ongoing work on optimizing numeric_mul,
where a patch is suggested with extra code to optimize for 32-bit.

I agree, however, that the absence of any comments from such a poll would not
give us any more information.

/Joel