Visual Studio 2022 is 64-bit – What does it mean?

Microsoft has recently announced the upcoming version of Visual Studio 2022. The new version of Visual Studio 2022 promises to be faster, more lightweight, better scalability for the enterprise large solution. One of the key highlights from the Visual Studio 2022 new features in Visual Studio 2022 will be a 64-bit application. With that, the core process of Visual Studio, devenv.exe, will have much more advantages of getting a larger data set, using more CPU registers, and taking advantage of more than 4GB of memory. You can now develop a much more complex solution without running out of memory; open larger-scale solutions without slowing down overall Visual Studio performance.

Visual Studio 2022 a 64-bit application

We need to keep in mind that Visual Studio can create and run 64-bit applications on 64-bit computers for a long time,

Visual Studio remains a 32-bit application itself so far.  Some of its internal components such as diagnostics/debuggers, compilers, ms-build work with the 64-bit process as well and expand as needed if you have 64-bit. But, the core IDE still works in a 32-bit mode.

So no matter, even you are running on a 64-bit Windows Operating System, the current version of Visual Studio can access a 32-bit program and can access up to 4 GB of memory each. While 64-bit programs increase the scope of the overall dataset and memory allocation limits.

Key Benefit of having VS 2022 as 64-bit

For a standard solution, it may not have a significant impact. But, when we are building some very large-scale enterprise solutions, running the visual studio for a long, using a different emulator for test and debug. In that case, this gives a much more high-performance, reliable, and scale workspace for the developer without slowing down the development IDE.

The current version and architecture of the platform solution with new Visual Studio would expected to remain same, additionally it will support the 64 bit application version for much more larger and complex solution

10 Effective Debugging Tips for .NET Developer

Just to recap

• Visual Studio supports creating and running 64-bit applications on 64-bit computers for a long, but Visual Studio remains a 32-bit application itself.
• If you have a 32-bit operating system, you can’t take advantage of these 64bit features.
• Visual Studio 2022 as a 64-bit application, is expected to be the same for other architecture, with only additional advantages of support of 64-bit for a 64-bit operating system.

How to check how if your application running on 64bit or 32 bit ?

You can check the version of the your operating system from “About your PC” settings.

Then, Open the “Task Manager” . Move to the “Details” tab. and right click on the column option to enable the “Platform”. By default it is turned off. So you need to select it to view the application platform.

One this is done, you should be able to see the 64bit / 32bit as platform for the application.

Visual Studio 2022 new features

What else? Visual Studio 2022 is expected to be more than just a 64-bit application,

• It will have full support for .NET 6, .NET Multi-platform App UI
• powerful integration with Git – ( some of the key updates on the new preview with VS 2019 are also great )
• User experiences enhancement
• Async collaboration
• improved code search
• and a lot of productivity enhancement.

Visual Studio 2022 Release Date

As part of the announcement, the first public preview of Visual Studio 2022 will be released this summer.

I am really excited for the new releases and looking forward to it.

Check out the announcement of the details at Microsoft Developer Blog also check out another great blog Microsoft announces Visual Studio 2022; will be available as 64-bit app

Check out some of my previous post on Visual Studio

Visual Studio Archives – Daily .NET Tips (dailydotnettips.com)