What are the benefits of 64-bit MATLAB versus 32-bit MATLAB?

Solution:

Support for the 64-bit Linux platform was introduced in MATLAB 7.0.1 (R14SP1).

The 64-bit addressing allows for much larger memory. As explained in our Memory Management Guide technical note below, memory on a 32-bit machine is limited to 2^32 bytes (i.e. 4GB):

http://www.mathworks.com/support/tech-notes/1100/1106.html

On a 64-bit machine this number is increased to 2^64 (i.e. an increase by a factor of 4 billion). Of course, most machines in use today will run out of physical resources (RAM and virtual memory) long before they begin to approach the theoretical 2^64-byte limit.
There is an internal limit of 2^31 elements per array in MATLAB. Up to MATLAB 7.2 (R2006a) this limit applies regardless of the platform. A 2^31 element double array would require 16 GB of space, thus making it impossible to create such an array on a 32-bit machine. A 64-bit machine can theoretically handle many arrays of this size, provided that there is enough RAM and hard disk space to store all the data.

Beginning with MATLAB 7.3 (R2006b), the largest array that can be created can contain 2^48-1 = 2.8147e14 elements.

Also, we do not recommend any specific brands of computer hardware but the system needs to meet certain specifications for it to be able to execute MATLAB. Please visit the following URL for more information regarding system requirements for MATLAB:

http://www.mathworks.com/support/sysreq/

Note that changing from 32-bit to 64-bit MATLAB only allows for the creation and manipulation of larger variables but does not imply a boost in execution speed. Additional information which may be helpful for choosing hardware suitable for use with MATLAB is available at:

http://www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/choosing_hardware.html