Support for AMD "Hammer" Hedges 64-bit Bet

A future version of Windows (but not the most imminent release, Windows .NET Server) will include support for AMD’s 64-bit Athlon and Opteron processors. Previously known by the code name Hammer, these processors are due to begin shipping in the fourth quarter of 2002. Microsoft did not set a date for the release of Windows that will support them. Before Microsoft’s endorsement, IT planners had no choice but to use Intel’s Itanium processor with a 64-bit version of Windows XP or the beta version of Windows .NET Server. Now they face a choice between two different, and incompatible, 64-bit architectures.

64-Bit Serves Specialized Applications

Most corporate applications (such as desktop productivity suites) will see no significant benefit from moving to 64-bit systems and will likely remain 32-bit applications for the foreseeable future. However, two major types of applications are likely to benefit:

Memory-intensive business applications. Some large-scale business applications, such as On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, can benefit from very large amounts of memory, typically by storing entire databases in memory instead of reading and writing to disk. The 32-bit architectures, such as the AMD Athlon and Intel Pentium, can address only 4GB of physical memory, while 64-bit systems can address much larger amounts of memory (up to 2048GB in the case of the AMD Opteron).