Windows 64-bit Supports AMD

Microsoft has confirmed that it will provide a version of Windows for 64-bit AMD processors, but customers will not see beta versions until mid-2003, with the final release tentatively scheduled for late 2003 or early 2004. Microsoft is already shipping versions of Windows and SQL Server that support the Intel 64-bit Itanium processor family, and Linux distributions such as SuSE are available for both the AMD and Intel 64-bit processors, but Microsoft is yet to announce any plans for 64-bit AMD versions of its server applications, such as SQL Server and Exchange.

The AMD 64-bit processors—Athlon for desktops and notebooks and Opteron for workstations and servers—provide 64-bit support by extending the basic x86 architecture. Therefore, they have the ability to execute applications compiled to take advantage of the 64-bit processors, as well as applications compiled for existing 32-bit processors, with little or no performance loss. In contrast, the Intel 64-bit processors use a new architecture and therefore can only run 32-bit programs by using an on-chip program translator, which negatively impacts their performance.