Comment 24 for bug 416990

How hard is it to run a 32-bit python on that machine? (BTW). In my testing, memory consumption for 32-bit python was close to half that of 64-bit. (Branching launchpad pre fixes was 1.3GB -64bit down to 954MB post, and 901MB-32bit down to 548MB. Which is 1.4:1 pre, and 1.7:1 post fixes.)

I don't know the sysadmin overhead. But

1) No process specifically should need 64-bit. If we hit >3GB (or 2GB even), then killing that process is probably a kindness :)
2) 1.7:1 is certainly a nice improvement versus having to buy 2x the memory