# Database Discussions > IBM DB2 >  32-bit vs. 64-bit ??

## sciencewiz10

What are the advantages of 64-bit over 32-bit?   Does DB2 support 64-bit archetictures for Windows or Linux?

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## jayped

Sam,

64-bit systems can address much greater amounts of memory than 32-bit systems. Most 32-bit systems are limited to 4GBs of memory. 64-bit systems remove this limitation which allows for larger buffer pools in high performance DB2 systems. DB2 is available in 64-bit for AIX, Solaris, Linux (on x86-64, Itanium, POWER, and zSeries), and Windows (Itanium and x86-64).
The newest (and most affordable) 64-bit platform is x86-64 which includes the AMD64 processors and Intel EM64T processors. This is an extension of the classic Intel x86 platform and thus has great performance for both 32-bit applications and 64-bit applications.

Microsoft should be releasing Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions soon, they have a release candidate available today. DB2 has a beta available as well (http://www.ibm.com/software/data/db2/windows/x64.html)

-Jay

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