64-bit

• The definition of a 64-bit system and overview of its evolution
• Architecture of 64-bit systems
• Data model, types' sizes, alignment
• Course on 64-bit application development
• Various articles
• Building the applications
• Miscellaneous
• My invitations

In this article, I've collected a huge amount of links all of which could prove potentially useful to software developers who are getting acquainted with 64-bit world. In general, we will cover C/C++ languages, but I am sure, that developers from other languages will discover a lot of interesting stuff here as well.

The definition of a 64-bit system and overview of its evolution

• John R. Mashey. The Long Road to 64 Bits.
• Wikipedia. 64-bit computing.

Architecture of 64-bit systems

• Sachin R Sangoi. The 64 bit OS Architecture.
• Andrey Karpov. AMD64 (EM64T) architecture.
• Wikipedia. Itanium (IA-64).
• Wikipedia. x86-64 (x64, AMD64, Intel64).
• Jeremy Gordon. Writing 64-bit programs.
• Eric Palmer. CPUID for x64 Platforms and Microsoft Visual Studio* .NET 2005.
• Stack frame layout on x86-64.
• Mike Becker. Accessing 32-bit DLLs from 64-bit code.
• The history of calling conventions, part 5: amd64.
• Andrey Karpov. The reasons why 64-bit programs require more stack memory.
• Knowledge Base. What advantages do 64-bit processors have over 32-bit ones?
• Knowledge Base. Why do 64-bit applications work faster than 32-bit ones?

Data model, types' sizes, alignment

• Data model.
• 64-Bit Programming Models: Why LP64?
• Why did the Win64 team choose the LLP64 model?
• Kang Su Gatlin. Windows Data Alignment on IPF, x86, and x64.
• Andrey Karpov. About size_t and ptrdiff_t.
• Dan Saks. Why size_t matters.

Course on 64-bit application development

• What 64-bit systems are.
• Support of 32-bit applications.
• Porting code to 64-bit systems. The pros and cons.
• Creating the 64-bit configuration.
• Building a 64-bit application.
• Errors in 64-bit code.
• The issues of detecting 64-bit errors.
• Static analysis for detecting 64-bit errors.
• Pattern 01. Magic numbers.
• Pattern 02. Functions with variable number of arguments.
• Pattern 03. Shift operations.
• Pattern 04. Virtual functions.
• Pattern 05. Address arithmetic.
• Pattern 06. Changing an array's type.
• Pattern 07. Pointer packing.
• Pattern 08. Memsize-types in unions.
• Pattern 09. Mixed arithmetic.
• Pattern 10. Storage of integer values in double.
• Pattern 11. Serialization and data interchange.
• Pattern 12. Exceptions.
• Pattern 13. Data alignment.
• Pattern 14. Overloaded functions.
• Pattern 15. Growth of structures' sizes.
• Phantom errors.
• Working with patterns of 64-bit errors in practice.
• Optimization of 64-bit programs.
• Peculiarities of creating installers for a 64-bit environment.
• Estimating the cost of 64-bit migration of C/C++ applications.

Various articles

• Andrey Karpov. A Collection of Examples of 64-bit Errors in Real Programs.
• 64-bit ODBC.
• Migrating 32-bit Managed Code to 64-bit.
• Checklist for 64-bit Microsoft Windows Drivers.
• Andrey Karpov. A 64-bit horse that can count.
• Andrey Karpov. Problems of testing 64-bit applications.
• Andrey Karpov. 64-bit programs and floating-point calculations.

Building the applications

• Andrey Karpov. Seven Steps of Migrating a Program to a 64-bit System
• Bojan Komazec. 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows C++ application.
• Daniel Pistelli. Moving to Windows Vista x64.
• Knowledge Base. The warnings C4311 and C4312 generated by the compiler when using the /Wp64 switch
• Knowledge Base. How to compile a 64-bit application with using Visual C++ Express 2005/2008/2010?
• Knowledge Base. A common error occurring when compiling a 64-bit application: error C2440, OnTimer
• Knowledge Base. Strange errors occurring when compiling the 64-bit version of an application, error C2664
• Knowledge Base. A common error occurring when compiling a 64-bit application: error C4235, Assembler
• Knowledge Base. How can I know if the DWORD_PTR type is defined using ifdef?
• Knowledge Base. Why does not Visual C++ support the inline assembler for Intel 64 and IA-64 anymore?
• Knowledge Base. Warning C4267 in the expression unsigned n = str.find(substr)
• Knowledge Base. How to check if a 64-bit project is being built in Visual Studio using #ifdef
• Knowledge Base. Using _WIN64/WIN64 macros

Miscellaneous

• Andrey Karpov. A nice 64-bit error in C.
• Knowledge Base. How to correctly print a value of the types __int64, size_t, and ptrdiff_t
• Knowledge Base. Is it possible to use more than 2 Gbytes of memory in a 32-bit program launched in the 64-bit Windows?
• Knowledge Base. How to correctly cast a pointer to int in a 64-bit application?
• Knowledge Base. How can a 32-bit program detect that it is launched in a 64-bit Windows?
• Knowledge Base. Functions of the ntohl/htonl class and 64-bit values
• Knowledge Base. Difference between %p and %x
• Knowledge Base. Why is the value of the ProgramFiles environment variable replaced with that of ProgramFiles(x86)?
• Knowledge Base. Is there a way to make the type size_t 32-bit in a 64-bit program?
• Knowledge Base. Is size_t a standard type in C++? And in C?
• Knowledge Base. Why does Windows put 64-bit units into System32?
• Knowledge Base. WOW6432Node and API-functions RegOpenKeyEx / RegEnumKeyEx
• Knowledge Base. Why does WoW64 use register and file system redirection?
• Knowledge Base. Confusion of WPARAM with UINT, and LPARAM with LONG
• Knowledge Base. How much memory can an application access in Win32 and Win64?
• Knowledge Base. What can I use instead of "int 3" instruction in a 64-bit application?
• Knowledge Base. Can I use 32-bit pointers in a 64-bit application?
• Knowledge Base. How can I find out in a 32-bit application what 64-bit processes are launched?
• Knowledge Base. What can I use instead of rundll32.exe to run 64-bit DLL?
• Knowledge Base. Why is it so hard to create a 64-bit version of an application?
• Knowledge Base. How can I find out in Win64 how many processor cores there are in the system?
• Knowledge Base. Why do 64-bit operating systems use only 48-bit addresses for addressing?
• Knowledge Base. What is the POINTER_32 macro?
• Knowledge Base. What does the pointer size depend on in C++ on different platforms?

My invitations

• I invite you to follow our twitter @Code_Analysis or Viva64 subreddit. Subjects: C/C++, 64-bit systems, testing, algorithms and other interesting programming stuff.
• I offer you to download the trial of PVS-Studio static code analyzer to ensure the reliability of your 64-bit applications.