[filmscanners] 64 bit support - Was: large scanning project

["" <pnielsen@passport.ca>]

A couple of thoughts:

Alternative OS's?   Is OS X considered 64 bit?  Do the applications utilize
this more effective/capable computing architecture?


Bottleneck?  As was pointed out - the scanner is the slowest part of the
puzzle.  The scanner captures information and then transfers it to the
computer across a link.   I suspect that compared to a fast CPU with 64 bit
processing capability and appropriate OS (Linux anyone?) ALL of the
methodologies (SCSIs, USBs, Firewires) will be bottlenecks.

Thus, any other bottlenecks will be immaterial unless they're tighter than
the above!   It appears from Laurie's explanation that Ed found the TWAIN
layer to be either problematic or a tighter bottleneck (or both) and the ROI
(non-financial) on writing his direct interface was positive so he did.  

I don't know in what size chunks
(bits/bytes/words/doublewords/quadwords/bigger) information gets transferred
across any of the above interfaces, but I'd imagine that the link in the
chain where bytes are grouped into 64 bit wide chunks for transfer might be
a bottleneck.

But then again, if an individual information element is only 16 bits wide,
does the application gain anything from being 64 bit in nature RELATIVE TO
MANIPULATING THAT CHUNK (I can't italicize the previous for emphasis -
please don’t feel that I'm yelling, I'm subtle-language impaired in this
email application).   Isn't that the focus of many tos-fros previously
relative to PS manipulating data in 8 bit or 15/16 bit chunks?  That frankly
derived from the resolution (ie, how many bits per picture element) the
scanner could create - it either presented PS with the lowest common
denominator or an opportunity but the opportunity was limited by the
resolution of the scanner.

(ok, time to circle round to the top)
And thus, we still end up with the physical interface bottlenecks, yielding
all of this discussion somewhat moot (but a great opportunity to gather
round the water cooler with the bunch of you).

Cheers,

Paul N.



Paul S. Nielsen
Toronto, Canada

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