June 19, 2012

Are you developing 64-bit Delphi applications yet?

A conversation came up yesterday that some people might still not understand the opportunity and benefits of creating 64-bit applications with Delphi XE2. Or that they may not even be aware that 64-bit Windows app development is even possible with Delphi XE2. So here's some info to further help explain as well as links to some of the resources and information that are available, just in case you haven't seen them.

Why do I want to create 64-bit Delphi applications?

If the answer isn't "because my customers or users are already demanding it", I think this info from our 64-bit Development Solutions page sums up the opportunities pretty well. Whether you're developing software to sell as an ISV or developing software for your own company or enterprise, there are many reasons to move to 64-bit.

ISVENTERPRISE
Sell more software and provide more flexibility for your customersSupport the growing 64-bit upgrade initiatives 
Accelerate upgrades of your softwareCreate more powerful enterprise level applications
Stay competitive in the industry and beat the competitionBuild applications that allow users to fully leverage the power and capabilities of 64-bit machines

Where can I learn more about the benefits of creating 64-bit Windows apps and how to do it with Delphi?



You can also watch this webinar on demand to learn more about 64-bit development with Delphi XE2 and see how easy it is.


If you're not on Delphi XE2 and not doing 64-bit development yet, you're potentially missing out on a big opportunity. There are special offers going on now so why not make the move to Delphi XE2, or download a trial and get started with 64-bit development with Delphi.

6 comments:

Bruce McGee said...

Not yet.

Olaf Monien said...

Honestly, our customers (or actually their customers) simply do not demand 64-bit applications, just because we can.
As long as Windows works the way it does, the vast majority of applications simply don't benefit from 64-bit.

As long as a broad user base runs on 32 bit, it requires you to ship 32 *and* 64 bit versions. This adds a lot of costs for development and esp. testing, costs that simply do not compare to a possible positive marketing effect.

Microsoft decided to go the ugly Windows 8 way, which in turn means for most of our business customers to stay at Win7 or even XP - which are mostly 32-bit installations. If Win8 would have been less "ugly" it would have been a chance for many to upgrade to 64-bit.

Don't get me wrong though: Delphi's 64-bit compiler is just fine - it's not EMBT's fault ...

My 2 cents on this.

Olaf

Jolyon Smith said...

"Delphi's 64-bit compiler is just fine - it's not EMBT's fault ..."

The fact that it was so late IS their fault.

The fact that we can realistically only just start confidently building 64-bit applications now, just as Windows 8 comes along just makes Delphi seem even more irrelevant than ever.

"Oh, you can do 64-bit now ? Oh well, we thought that was going to have a big impact 3 or 4 years ago but really it wasn't that big a deal after all. But now we're looking at Windows 8 and Metro apps and that is a huge game changer ... can you do that in Delphi ? No ? Oh, well, I guess looking at how long it took for you guys to catch up to 64-bit I suppose we shouldn't expect anything for at least 2-3 years.... good luck with that."

Bruce McGee said...

@Jolyon, Now that the 64 bit compiler has been available for about 10 months, have you been using it actively?

Adrien Reboisson said...

Unfortunately, there is a bug in the Win64 RTL which causes any multithreaded application to leak memory.

This bug is really a showstopper for me... which forces me to stick with the 32 bit compiler even if I bought XE2 :-(

http://qc.embarcadero.com/wc/qcmain.aspx?d=105559

Roman said...

As I mentioned in the EMBT forum we are deploying 64 bit ISAPI DLL and also 64 bit desktop applications.