>>>>> "Miguel" == Miguel Marco <mmarco at unizar.es> writes:
Miguel> I guess that numerical routine should take advance of the
Miguel> extra precission easily, but i have no clue about the
Miguel> internals of symbolic manipulation algorithms.
Pure speculation on my part, since I don't have a 64-bit machine with
a 64-bit Lisp.
Integer arithmetic (fixnums) would probably be faster because less
consing would be done. Assuming fixnums are 60 bits or so. Floating
point probably wouldn't be faster.
Symbolic manipulation could be slower because now everything (Lisp
objects) is twice as big. This could cause caches to fill sooner so
you won't run as fast.
On the other hand, you could have much more memory, allowing you to do
stuff otherwise not possible on a 32-bit machine. (I'm always
skeptical about these. If you run out of memory, how useful could the
results be anyway?)
All of these could be tested fairly easily by someone running maxima
on a 64-bit machine with a 64-bit Lisp. The timings for the test suite
would give some indication.
Ray