Linked by John O'Sullivan on Fri 17th Oct 2003 17:48 UTC
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." Bill Gates, 1981. "64 bit is coming to desktops,there is no doubt about that, But apart from Photoshop, I can't think of desktop applications where you would need more than 4 gigabytes of physical memory, which is what you have to have in order to benefit from this technology." It seems to me that by the time it ships, Longhorn will need 4 gigs of RAM.
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XP 64bit for AMD64 (Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems) is already available on MSDN. I suspect it is kind of a hybrid between the IA64 version and the x86 version. It uses a modified wow64 layer for running 32bit apps. IA64 architecture uses EFI firmware wheras AMD64 uses the traditional bios and plug-n-play.
That is probably the one thing that really let down the Opteron; the continual hauling around of the sad excuse for a firmware (BIOS) and configuration technology (PnP). IMHO, they would have been better off either adopting EFI or if they wanted something that was openstandards, adopt OpenBoot, which would free them from the limitations that BIOS imposes onto operating system developers.
[/i]The NT kernel is written in mostly portable C code with the platform specific bits being kept in the hardware abstraction layer. The experiance of creating the IA64 version probably made making the AMD64 version a lot more straight forward.[/i]
IIRC, there is also a small amount of assembly that can be traced right back to the first version. It was used as a way of speeding it up. BeOS did the same thing as well. There was decent amount of assembly with C/C++ floating on top.
The release should be sometime in the first half of next year.
In some ways its a shame the OS couldn't be ready at the same time as the chip was released. I can't imagine many OEMs want to ship 64bit systems without the OS support. Do they give you a voucher to upgrade to 64bit XP when it is released?
Well, IMHO, it is better for Microsoft to take their time rather than trying to rush it and end up with AMD copping alot of flak. Why would they get flack? just look at the surveys done. As Windows increase, the satisfaction customers had with the big brands computers increased, as if to say that some how, the vendors computers have increase in quality, which isn't necessarily true.
Let us also remember than Microsoft has to optimise their compilers for x86-64. Yes, I know, the most logical thing to do would be to work with GCC and use that instead, however, as I said, that would be a logical thing to do.
Won't it be nice to have the whole of Windows compiled for the newest processor rather than the lowest common denominator x86 version? (i586 at the moment I think)
The biggest problem initially will probably be driver support. I'm sure nVidia and ATI will be up to the task but how long will it be for Creative etc. and other smaller hardware vendors to create 64bit drivers. I don't expect my digital TV card to keep on working.
Well, Nvidia is on board, same with Matrox as well. I haven't heard about ATI yet, but I assume that all the major players are working with AMD to get their video cards on par with the AMD processor.