Architecture - 32-bit handling 64-bit instructions
- by tkoomzaaskz
tomasz@tomasz-lenovo-ideapad-Y530:~$ lscpu
Architecture: i686
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 2
On-line CPU(s) list: 0,1
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 2
Socket(s): 1
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
CPU family: 6
Model: 23
Stepping: 6
CPU MHz: 2000.000
BogoMIPS: 4000.12
Cache L1d: 32K
Cache L1i: 32K
Cache L2: 3072K
I can see that my architecture is 32-bit (i686). But CPU op-mode(s) are 32-bit and 64-bit. The question is: how come? How is it handled that a 32-bit processor performs 64-bit operations? I guess it's a lot slower than native 32-bit operations. Is it built-in processor functionality (to emulate being 64-bit) or is it software dependent? When does it make sense for a 32-bit processor to run 64-bit operations?
