New 64-bit Options Aid Performance, Security

New 64-bit Windows editions and recently released 64-bit server hardware mean organizations can begin deploying 64-bit computers. Using 64-bit processors can benefit memory-intensive applications such as databases and terminal servers, and speed computationally intensive applications for financial analysis and engineering. However, to fully realize the benefits of 64-bit systems, customers will have to deploy 64-bit applications, and future gains in performance could require even larger leaps from software developers both inside and outside of Microsoft.

Two 64-Bit Processor Architectures

The term “64-bit” designates processors that employ 64-bit memory addresses and registers. Microsoft supports two major 64-bit processor architectures, both backward compatible with the 32-bit x86 architecture that dominates the marketplace today. However, they use different methods to provide compatibility with existing 32-bit applications.

Itanium. Intel’s Itanium architecture (abbreviated IA64) breaks from the x86 design used in 32-bit processors, such as Intel’s 486 and Pentium processors. Itanium provides high performance for computationally intensive 64-bit applications, but has relatively poor performance when running today’s 32-bit applications in its Win32 emulation subsystem, known as Windows-on-Windows64 (WoW64).