Can Data Loader run with 64-bit Java?

Well that was easy (does that sound sarcastic?). I installed the 32-bit Java runtime environment, so now I have two JREs: 32-bit one in C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.8.0_73 and 64-bit one in C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.8.0_73

And I didn't even have to change JAVA_HOME to get the data loader working, it just works now. Automagically. Not even PATH was changed by the installer. java -version still reports the 64-bit version, but somehow data loader can find the 32-bit version (I guess because it was installed in its default folder).

So the answer to my question is: no.

I also found the answer to be no, but there is an alternative for those that do not wish to install a 32 bit jre system - wide, but need to use one for data loader (my use case).

I followed the instructions from this (https://stackoverflow.com/a/6571736/8148972) post, and extracted the jre to my data loader folder in a new sub directory 'Java'.

You can then write a powershell, batch or commandline script to run dataloader using this jre. I used the following line in a powershell script

.\Java\bin\java.exe -jar dataloader-40.0.0-uber.jar -cp com.salesforce.dataloader.process.DataLoaderRunner

This will use the jre you extracted to run dataloader.