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MacTeX installs 32-bit universal binaries for TeX Live, and Ghostscript. Many Macintosh machines can also run 64-bit code. During the construction of MacTeX, we experimented with providing 64-bit binaries for Snow Leopard, but our tests produced little speed improvement. Since the 64-bit binaries would receive minimal testing, we opted to omit them from the release version of MacTeX.
Shortly after the release of MacTeX, a user benchmarked 64-bit code for a large project. In his tests, an 800 page book typeset in 4.40 seconds with 32-bit pdflatex, and in 3.39 seconds with 64-bit pdflatex. When running this book through latex, dvipdf, and ghostscript, the 32-bit code executed in 10.70 seconds and 64-bit code executed in 9.60 seconds.
If you find this minor speed improvement useful, download and install the following package.
This package adds 64-bit binaries to TeX Live 2009 and Ghostscript 8.70. The package will only install on Snow Leopard; it requires that TeX Live 2009 and Ghostscript 8.70 be installed first. Note that TeX Live 2009 and Ghostscript 8.70 are part of MacTeX-2009. This zip file has md5 sum
dfa41dbdf4eb7bd93d432523bf3ca7e7 .
After installing the package, the TeX Distribution Preference Pane will show two distributions, "TeXLive-2009" and "TeXLive-2009-64." Switch to the first to use the old 32-bit binaries; switch to the second to use the new 64-bit binaries. Note that these distributions share the same texmf trees and differ only in the binaries used. In 64-bit mode, the programs xetex, xdv2pdf, xindy, and asy still run in 32 bits, for various reasons. The behaviors of TeX Live Utility and tlmgr do not change when switching between TeXLive-2009 and TeXLive-2009-64.
The new binaries for TeX Live are installed in /usr/local/texlive/2009/bin/universal-darwin-64. The new binary for Ghostscript, gs-X11-64, is installed in /usr/local/bin. The program gs is actually a symbolic link to one of gs-noX11, gs-X11, or gs-X11-64; it will link to gs-X11-64 if this package is installed.