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I think the Pentium 4 was the last 32 bit processor from Intel.
But maybe you mean the operating system.
Yes, I meant OS.
Lots of people are using VPS's with less than 4 GB memory, you know.
answer: Yes. (And depending on one's definition of server maybe quite a lot more than one might expect!)
answer: Perhaps ... it depends?
Given the above answers to your two original questions, do please consider perhaps reformulating your inquiry a bit ...
for example, one could ask: "why might someone prefer (or even need) to use a 32-bit OS?"
(full disclosure: I may be just a bit biased from the occasional foray into 8-bit computing - albeit on microcontrollers ... but the same sorts of questions sometimes do get asked, if not always definitively answered, in that arena as well. Something something something, now get off my lawn!
)
I deal with a lot of systems running stuff like vehicle brake testing equipment (in garages), emissions testing equipment, etc, most of which run 32bit systems still. As the move towards tablet based systems (for ease of use) is coming in they're slowly changing.
Had an issue recently replacing a PC for one as I figured the software would run fine in 32bit mode on Win 7 - nope. We had to get a copy of 32 bit windows for it to run.
I have an ARM 32 bit server (Scaleway C1 which they have taken off their pricing page) if that counts. Also a Beaglebone Black at home. For x86, some old laptops but no servers any more that I know of. I ran 32 bit OS's on 128MB and smaller vps's for a while to save some memory but eventually dedided it didn't matter.
My vote goes to build a gaming server for Pacman!
Great idea. A multiplayer Pacman where I can play as a ghost.
Yes. Some major reason is that 64-bits blow up size and offer very little in return unless one has more than 4 GB memory and does quite massive operations that significantly profit from 64-bit (which next to no web server or email server does.
Excellent example and a real use case: DNS servers.
I've benchmarked i686 vs amd64. The increased memory usage is moderate, definitely not "blow up" (I know it's just your wording habit, but still), and there are surely benefits for web servers, for example RSA-2048 is about 10x faster on amd64.
The previous benchmark used the Qemu's default CPU. I've done a new one with a modern Intel CPU and host-passthough, as well as real OpenSSL (instead of LibreSSL) on Alpine-virt 3.10.1. The result is less dramatic, but the difference is still very real. Notably 1.13x for AES-128-GCM, 1.93~2.27x for Ed25519 and 4.41~4.97x for RSA-2048.
Edit: Thanks to AES-NI, the results for AES-128-CBC are very close, as expected.
64-bit systems generally waste half your memory, and often quite a bit of disk space for the 32-bit libraries as well. In fact Firefox requires 4X as much RAM for their 64-bit version: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/68.0esr/system-requirements/
I'd ALMOST say anybody running a 64-bit OS on a VPS with less than 4GB of RAM is foolish and wasteful. To be fair, there are a few reasons to go 64-bit when you have less memory, but it remains wasteful of limited memory, which can be a real drawback on low end systems... which seems relevant here.
There is nothing to debate about. 32bit is not obsolete just as FAT32 is not obsolete.
Now are we sucking up to the mod?
@FAT32
That is absolutely untrue. It's not that all of your memory stores pointers.
For example, OpenVPN (basic server setup) uses 3572kB on i686 and 4056kB on amd64. That's 1.14x, not 2x. The base system takes about 1.26x for amd64, also far less from 2x.
One must not just look at an application on 686 vs. on amd64 but also at the whole system.
Regarding public key encryption like RSA one must also consider that that is used only once at session start; after that, which usually means the vast majority of time, symmetric crypto (like AES) is used.
One must realize that the whole system is composed of a base system plus various standalone applications. I don't expect any application takes twice the memory on amd64.
That's true, I'd say it's a trade-off between faster crypto (for some modes of operations, AES does benefit from 64-bit), and less memory usage.
I didn't say that amd64 bit doubles the size of resources used.
Almost everything in computing is a trade-off. Yes, the performance on 686 is lower than on amd64 - but performance is not always the decisive factor. Example: the vast majority of name servers are under very mild load and being able to use a smaller VPS saves cost without losing needed performance.
But again, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to preach that 64-bit is useless or a waste. What I'm saying is simply that in some cases going 32-bit is a better choice wrt someones priorities.
Yes
No
I still run 128MB LEBs so...no.
Relevant poll/thread: https://hostballs.com/t/64-bit-vs-32-bit-for-low-ram-vps/1821
I usually use 32-bit for VPSes with 512 MB RAM or less, and 64-bit for everything else.
Note that you can only access ~3 GB RAM in userspace without PAE, as ~1 GB of the addresses are reserved for the kernel. With PAE you can access up to 64 GB RAM on a 32-bit system. I wouldn't recommend PAE these days though - If you have more than ~3 GB RAM, just go 64-bit.
Yeah, specialized equipment is often the reason to run old hw/sw. We still have DL580G2 at work, 4*XeonMP (pentium 4) 16GB ram that is, because it has whole bunch of funny pci-x cards which would be a pain to replace (and which refuse to work in 32bit pci). It also has surprisingly good performance for its age, the only obvious downside is power usage, but... replacing stupidly expensive specialized hw just to reduce power usage? Makes no sense... Being able at least to run modern OS with security fixes and such is nice.
Is there sth like a table of this or just experience?