A number of scientific disciplines will undoubtedly benefit a great deal by the ability to perform calculations involving very large numbers twice as fast. Geographic modeling by oil companies, finite element analysis, database processing, tasks involving computational fluid dynamics…the list of scientific computing applications is limitless and ever-growing.
Among the applications that will be most affected are CAD (Computer Aided Design) systems, which are used by engineers and architects to develop designs for everything ranging from home floor plans to airplanes. The software requires a high-quality graphics monitor, among other things, and operates on desktop computers. The shift to 64-bit will likely improve the efficiency of such systems.