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Windows Operating Systems Software

Windows XP 64-Bit Customer Preview Program 417

Posted by michael from the bleeding-edge-pain dept.
MBCook writes "I just notice that Microsoft has a new Windows XP 64-Bit Customer Preview Program starting today (February 3rd). If you have a AMD Opteron or Athlon64, you can go to the download page to get your copy. It's a pre-release copy that will expire in 360 days (which probably means the final will be out by then). Now Intel just changed their 64-bit plans, and all of a sudden this appears. Speculate away!"
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Windows XP 64-Bit Customer Preview Program More

Windows XP 64-Bit Customer Preview Program

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  • "I just notice"? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Chuck Bucket ( 142633 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:31PM (#8174642) Homepage Journal
    "I just notice" that this post wasn't proofed before it was posted.

    CB

  • Actual Performance Difference (Score:5, Interesting)

    by neomage86 ( 690331 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:32PM (#8174657)
    I wonder if a 64 bit OS will make any performance difference for the average desktop user. Since its not like any normal people have more than a gig of ram anyways. Is it possible that it could even slow down 32 bit apps?

    • Re:Actual Performance Difference (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Paladin128 ( 203968 ) <aaron&traas,org> on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:36PM (#8174706) Homepage
      My guess is that the initial rev will, in fact, be slower on 64-bit. Microsofts compilers are new to 64-bitness, and a reasonable amount of memory bandwidth will be wasted on larger ints. On the other hand, in 64-bit mode on the Opteron, there are twice as many GPR's, so it could wind up being faster. My bets are still on slower largely due to immaturity of the platform.

      • Re:Actual Performance Difference (Score:5, Informative)

        by Vlad_the_Inhaler ( 32958 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:41PM (#8174755)
        There were linux benchmarks which made /. recently, comparing the speed of 32-bit code and 64-bit code on the Opteron. 32-bit code ran measurably faster.
        • I don't remember Linux ones, but there were some for Solaris a couple of weeks ago. The benchmarks themselves were pretty widely slated here, though.
        • That's bizzare, the benchmarks that we did before porting Gentoo showed that the Opterons were actually faster in 64bit mode than in 32bit.. I attribute this to the presence of twice as many generic registers..

          • Re:Actual Performance Difference (Score:5, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @07:23PM (#8175152)
            Go their benchmarks aslo show a marked improvement for Linux on 64bit. [aceshardware.com]

            Some tests scored about as much as a 20% improvement in performance, athough it's more realistic to expect a 8-10% average improvement across the board.

            Of course windows likely will run slower since it's so optimized for the older 32bit platform.

            Linux is just a much more mature platform for 64bit computers. I mean we've had Suse 64bit (aviable for free from Suse's ftp install stuff) for almost a year now.

            • 64-bit Windows (Score:5, Insightful)

              by kylef ( 196302 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @12:42AM (#8177269)
              Of course windows likely will run slower since it's so optimized for the older 32bit platform.

              The last time I checked, NT is built on something called a "Hardware Abstraction Layer" that made it relatively painless to port NT from MIPS to x86 and then to PowerPC. (NT was designed on MIPS R4000 machines which themselves were completely designed internally by Microsoft. This effort was deemed necessary to keep the codebase free of x86-specific assumptions and optimizations since portability was a key NT goal.) The hardest part about getting your system to run on a new 64-bit platform is getting drivers to work; generally you need lots of support from hardware vendors to accomplish this feat. Getting the OS itself to compile is the easy part.

              But I doubt seriously that Windows NT is "so optimized for the older 32bit platform." The kernel is clearly portable to other architectures, and was in fact developed FIRST on a non-x86 architecture with different properties (page size, Endian-ness, etc). This leads me to believe that it is emphatically not "optimized" specifically for 32-bit x86. If you have evidence otherwise, I would like to see it.

              Linux is just a much more mature platform for 64bit computers.

              Much more mature? Perhaps you were unaware of Windows XP 64-bit Edition [microsoft.com]? Sure, it only runs on Itanium, but do you not honestly think that for Microsoft to have released it in early 2003 that they would probably have been working on it and testing it for at least a couple years prior to that? Also, from Microsoft's website, I notice that they have also implemented a 32-bit emulation layer for Itanium called "Windows On Windows 64" (WOW64) that lets the OS run 32-bit X86 code. Does Suse have this capability built-in?

              The other issue which I pointed out earlier is the driver situation. You can't really call a product "much more mature" unless its drivers are more mature. I don't see a clear win either way at the moment.

              • Re:64-bit Windows (Score:4, Informative)

                by joib ( 70841 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @02:47AM (#8177781)

                > Linux is just a much more mature platform for 64bit computers.

                Much more mature? Perhaps you were unaware of Windows XP 64-bit Edition? Sure, it only runs on Itanium, but do you not honestly think that for Microsoft to have released it in early 2003 that they would probably have been working on it and testing it for at least a couple years prior to that?

                Linux was ported to the alpha about a decade ago (this was still a 32-bit kernel, just like NT on alpha AFAIK), sometime in 1996 a real 64-bit version was released (2.0). Despite MS market share, I'd guess that there are a lot more 64-bit linux installations around than 64-bit windows.

                Another important things is that since most linux software is open source and designed for portability from the start, a 64-bit kernel with a 64-bit userspace is as easy as a recompile (well, almost). MS has a big disadvantage here, because they need to wait for their ISV:s to produce 64-bit programs as well as drivers.

                • Re:64-bit Windows (Score:4, Interesting)

                  by kylef ( 196302 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @04:13AM (#8178022)
                  Despite MS market share, I'd guess that there are a lot more 64-bit linux installations around than 64-bit windows.

                  You might be correct, but honestly both of us are just speculating. To be honest, I think neither Linux nor Windows can match the number of Solaris 64-bit installations there are in the world. But again, it would be interesting to see some data on the matter. My point was only that one can't call Linux "a much more mature platform," as the previous poster did.

                  I do know that HP and one or two others are shipping Itanium2 servers full-steam at the moment, despite Intel's recent 64-bit malaise. It's almost a given that all of those will be running 64-bit Windows. I've seen a demo of a HP 64-bit workstation running 64-bit Windows, and it was really nice. It even had accelerated video drivers, but I don't know what video hardware.

                  MS has a big disadvantage here, because they need to wait for their ISV's to produce 64-bit programs as well as drivers.

                  This is absolutely correct. If you have source code, you can (usually) just recompile for 64-bit user-mode applications. Otherwise you wait for an ISV to produce a binary for you. But Linux64 is in the same boat with Windows64 as far as drivers go. Arguably worse, since manufacturers have been (until now) unwilling to make their drivers open source and generally produce Linux drivers only after Windows drivers are already complete. And as we all know, the KEY to PC users' hearts is seamless hardware support!

                  • Re:64-bit Windows (Score:3, Interesting)

                    by Bert64 ( 520050 )
                    However a lot of linux drivers are 64bit clean, and have long worked on 64bit Alpha, PPC and Sparc machines running Linux.. Many PCI nic and scsidrivers for instance work flawlessly across different architectures including 64bit ones.
                    I myself have an Alphastation with a number of pci cards using drivers intended for 32bit x86 machines, which work perfectly well.

                • Re:64-bit Windows (Score:3, Interesting)

                  by Bert64 ( 520050 )
                  What`s more, 64bit windows is something new, so your far more likely to encounter non 64bit clean code in windows apps, Contrast this to unix apps.. where 64bit systems have been available for years and so a majority of programs can already compile cleanly on a 64bit platform.

              • Re:64-bit Windows (Score:3, Informative)

                by Xabraxas ( 654195 )
                The last time I checked, NT is built on something called a "Hardware Abstraction Layer" that made it relatively painless to port NT from MIPS to x86 and then to PowerPC

                I guess the last time you checked was a long time ago. Originally NT was built on top of a microkernel, and that is what was supposed to make it portable. Unfortunately it was dog slow and it is no longer a real microkernel. The microkernel is what you are referring to when you say "Hardware Abstraction Layer". It's safe to say that Wi

              • Re:64-bit Windows (Score:3, Informative)

                by Bert64 ( 520050 )
                Windows NT has always been a 32bit platform however, even the version for the alpha processor used hacks to make the processor appear to be a 32bit one, the alpha, like the itanium, is a 64bit design from the ground up and has no 32bit compatibility mode atall, however it can emulate 32bit x86 and 32bit vax in software.
                Linux on amd64 doesn`t need to emulate 32bit x86, since the amd64 architecture can execute 32bit x86 code natively. However alpha linux can emulate 32bit x86 code with a tool called em86
                Asi

        • Re:Actual Performance Difference (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Miguelito ( 13307 ) * <mm-slashdot@migu ... rg minus painter> on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @08:03PM (#8175495) Homepage
          Well I did some benchmarks using openssl's built in speed tests, and running in 64 bit vs 32 bit made a HUGE difference. Of course that was running a 64bit openssl as well. The opterons I have access to even beat the Itanium2s I have access to at work. By a lot in the smaller bit key sizes, but still either tied or beat the ia64 in the larger key sizes.

          Here [miguelito.org] are the charts I made in OpenOffice on the data I collected. Even a 2GHz opteron beat a 3.2Ghz Xeon in 32 bit mode. :)

          Of course this was just a benchmark, but it does show that things that use openssl would benefit from running under 64bit on an opteron.

        • Re:Actual Performance Difference (Score:5, Informative)

          by jkovach ( 1036 ) <slashdot@jkovach.net> on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @08:52PM (#8175871) Homepage
          It depends on what you're doing. I recently gave myself a 1.8 GHz Opteron system for Christmas and have been running some performance tests comparing 32 and 64 bit versions of the same applications.

          Using LAME compiled from source with the default compiler options and "--alt-preset standard" encoding settings, it took 4m20s to encode an 11 minute MP3 with the 32 bit version and 2m51s to encode using the 64 bit version - about 30% faster. However, comparing some of the filters in a 64 bit GIMP 1.3.23 compiled from source with default settings to the GIMP 1.3.23 from the Debian distribution was quite different - running the "Diffraction Patterns" filter with default options on a 512x512 image took 11 seconds with the 32 bit version and 16 seconds with the 64 bit version - about 50% slower!

          Of the other tests I ran, MP3 decoding with mpg123, bzip2 compression and AES encryption with OpenSSL were faster in 64 bit mode, and 3DES encryption with OpenSSL was faster in 32 bit mode. Of course, one of the advantages of having a hybrid 32/64 bit processor is that you can run whichever version is faster for a given task, onlike on the Itanium which until recently had only software emulation for 32 bit code.

          I have also heard that 64 bit Windows on Opteron is slower at running 32 bit code than 32 bit Windows on Opteron, which has made me want to rerun my 32 bit tests under a 32 bit kernel. I also want to run the same tests on a Mac G5 and a Pentium 4 for comparison. Some other time...

      • Re:Actual Performance Difference (Score:5, Informative)

        by Neon Spiral Injector ( 21234 ) * on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:45PM (#8174801)
        Microsoft has had a 64-bit version of NT since almost the start. Also sizeof (int) == 4 on AMD64, same as IA32. Just the pointers are larger.

        • sizeof on modern OSes (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:55PM (#8174889)
          char is 8-bit, nearly by definition
          short is 16-bit
          int is 32-bit (DOS and Xenix are not modern)
          long is 32-bit on all Windows OSes
          long is the same size as a pointer Linux, BSD, Mac
          void* is the natural size for the machine
          long long is 64-bit

          So 32-bit Windows and 32-bit UNIX have the
          same sizes a each other. 64-bit systems differ,
          because Windows sets sizeof(long)==4 and a
          UNIX system sets sizeof(long)==sizeof(void*).

        • sizeof (long long) == 8... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Ayanami Rei ( 621112 ) * <rayanami AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @07:38PM (#8175311) Journal
          and the Opteron can hold it one register. Just prefix the instruction with the OTHER size prefix byte. (for those who don't already know, most intel instructions if operating on a 16-bit short require a prefix byte. On the Opteron, you use a different prefix to get 64-bit ints and the extended regs)

          There are plenty of places where it makes sense to use 64-bit regs, especially in the kernel when involving counters, timers, GIDs, and such.

        • Re:Actual Performance Difference (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Soko ( 17987 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @08:06PM (#8175524) Homepage
          NT for Alpha had no long pointers and the same 4GB memory limit etc. as its IA32 counterpart. The processor was certainly 64 bits, but the OS was 32 bits at it's core. IIRC there were some places where they had to use 64 in order to get the thing to load, but not where it counted.

          If Microsoft had actually used the Alpha to it's fullest potential, all of my servers would likely be runnning 21464s, not Xeons.

          Yes, I'm still mad at DEC/Compaq/HP for squandering the Alpha tech. *grumble*

          Soko
      • Nope. int and long are still 32 bits, at least on MS platforms. long long is 64 bits. The only difference is with the pointers. Otherwise, you have to specifically request a 64-bit data size. This way, you can keep binary compatibility (struct layout) and avoid memory wastage for places where 64 bits aren't needed. But you get more address space, more registers, and faster 64-bit math (when needed).

        I just saw some very simple CPU-bounded benchmarks that put the AMD64 2.0 GHz (on WinXP-64) at about 2X

    • Re:Actual Performance Difference (Score:5, Funny)

      by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:46PM (#8174810)
      I wonder if a 64 bit OS will make any performance difference for the average desktop user.

      Of course! We need an operating system that will support a pointer to all the RAM on the planet.

    • In a 32-bit machine, each fetch from memory retrieves 4 bytes. Even if you only use one, the other three are cached. So, when reading sequentially, you get four bytes for the price of one.

      In a 64-bit machine, each fetch returns 8 bytes, so you 8 for the price of one.
    • I already covered this on another thread of this story, but the primary advantage of AMD64 applications over IA32 is the increased number of registers that the AMD64 instruction set affords, 8 general purpose registers over the 4 provided by IA32. This can significantly improve performance as it reduces the chance code needs to hit cache or main memory in the event that 4 general purpose registers are not sufficient for the task at hand.

    • Re:Actual Performance Difference (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Zeinfeld ( 263942 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @07:03PM (#8174964) Homepage
      I wonder if a 64 bit OS will make any performance difference for the average desktop user. Since its not like any normal people have more than a gig of ram anyways. Is it possible that it could even slow down 32 bit apps?

      Its been a long time since I had performance issues due to CPU bottlenecks. My twin processor 650MHz box works just as fast as my 2.4GHz single processor box in practice.

      The big issue for me are the cases where the stupid machine just locks up and does fuck all for 20 seconds or so. CPU meter shows 3% utilization, no disk activity. What is the stupid thing doing?

      Same goes for UNIX systems, its not the processing thats the issues, or even the legitimate I/O delays, its the cretinous delays built into broken device drivers and applications.

      I would like Windows to have a meter built in that would show which processes were waiting and the resources they were waiting on.

      My other pet peeve is what the cretins at Checkpoint think is an acceptable VPN client. Every time the credentials time out a box appears for me to re-enter my credentials. Only I use cert based credentials stored in CAPI so all I am doing is hitting OK. Even so the box locks the user interface for about 90 seconds while it does something. Oh @$#(& it did it again.

      • Well, on Windows (Score:4, Informative)

        by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @07:16PM (#8175087) Homepage
        The big issue for me are the cases where the stupid machine just locks up and does fuck all for 20 seconds or so. CPU meter shows 3% utilization, no disk activity. What is the stupid thing doing?

        Same goes for UNIX systems, its not the processing thats the issues, or even the legitimate I/O delays, its the cretinous delays built into broken device drivers and applications.

        On Windows, the process locking up everything here most often seems to be explorer.exe. I've found that going into task manager, killing and running it from there (since you just lost your start menu with the run command) will restore the machine to normal.

        Using that little trick every time it starts acting stupid, my windows box is running quite nicely for weeks. Doing it doesn't interrupt any of the applications or services running, the kernel is handling that just fine. Quite silly really.

        Kjella

        • Re:Well, on Windows (Score:5, Informative)

          by DexterX ( 684321 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @10:35PM (#8176492)
          On Win2K and higher, you can split out the file system browsing from the desktop instance of Explorer.exe. Run Explorer and select Tools->Folder Options->View->"Launch folder windows in a separate process". It uses a little more memory but prevents a slow device from slowing down the rest of the GUI.

          You're right, though; Explorer blocks waiting for I/O way more often than it ought to. Most of the multithreading in GUIs is pretty good on Windows, so I'm not sure why Explorer tends to block on floppy I/O, network I/O, etc. Fortunately, it usually doesn't affect other running apps.

    • Re:Actual Performance Difference (Score:4, Informative)

      by myg ( 705374 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @07:32PM (#8175245)
      Actually, there are a few tasks that benefit from 64-bit code: Encryption, Databases, and file-systems. Most modern filesystems allow files >4GB and with digital video the norm now files much larger than 4GB are common.

      So the processor spends less clock ticks doing 64-bit arithmatic for file offsets. Cryptography can benefit too. In particular the DH key agreement protocol and RSA public-private key cipher both require the use of "big numbers" (as in 1024 bits and up). And doing these operations 64-bits at a time rather than 32-bits can result in a performance impact. SSL session negotiation may be improved significantly, so that could be a boon to SSL webservers (not that IIS makes a great webserver).

      Databases also need 64-bit numbers. Even low-end databases frequently have ID numbers that are 64-bits. For large databases the ability to compute page offsets (which are typically 64-bits) more efficiently can help.

      And perhaps a subtle improvement may be in the handling of bitmaps. For example doing a bitwise operation 64-bits at a time will process more pixels than a 32-bit operation in the same amount of time.

      But all of those things are really just noise for the special case of amd64. The x86 has always been a register-starved architecture. Going to 64-bit mode gives you 8 more general purpose registers. That alone may very well counter any of the performance loss due to 64-bit integers.

      Lots of people on Slashdot have said 64-bit code is slower but haven't pointed out why. Probably the most important thing is cache coherency. 64-bit data structures are (surprise) larger than their 32-bit counterparts. That means that the effective rate of the cache is reduced. As an added bummer, address translation on 64-bit values is slower when there are more levels of translation.

  • Speculation ? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:33PM (#8174676) Journal
    We don' need no stinkin' speculation, why this is as obvious as a cow on a haystack!

    Seriously, just what grounds do you need for bringing charges of industrial manipulation of the market by the two largest players ? Ok, there's no evidence (yet!), but just how thin can you stretch credulity before SNAP! ?

    Simon

  • Intel will have to follow AMD (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Random BedHead Ed ( 602081 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:33PM (#8174677) Homepage Journal
    At this point there's enough Opteron stuff out there that Intel can't avoid implementing an architecture compatible with amd64. Yes, I think the timing is probably not a coincidence. Though I'm sure Microsoft wasn't waiting for Intel, they probably informed Groves and Co. of the release in advance.

    If Intel can't stay compatible with AMD's lineup they could end up behind. That would certainly be a first for Intel.

    • That would certainly be a first for Intel.
      Not really, it'd just be reverting back to where things were about 4 years ago. AMD was the first to break 1GHz, remember? It wasn't until later with the introduction of SSE2 (which the Athlons lack) and AMD hitting a brick wall with ramping up the clockspeed on the Athlons that Intel regained the overall performance lead. When it comes to price/performance, Intel has always lagged behind.
      • The thing that annoys me the most is that Intel has guessed wrong badly twice in trying to drive the market deeper into their corner(RAMBUS, Itanium) and AMD has guessed right both times (DDR, X86-64) and all the time Intel cranks out a profit every quarter and AMD come's up for air for a couple of quarters every other year. If Intel were going against an equal-sized adversary they'd be chapter 11 some years ago for making such mistakes.

  • Simple (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tenfish ( 748408 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:35PM (#8174691)
    Intel and Microsoft may or may not have a business deal to promote Intel's 64-bit processors. Microsoft wouldn't do this for AMD, because splitting the processor targets would cost Microsoft money. Developing for two processors is more expensive than developing for one. There's no need to delve into anti-corporate mumbo-jumbo to explain this one. It's simple economics, and probably good business from Bill Gates' point of view.

    • Re:Simple (Score:4, Informative)

      by diamondsw ( 685967 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:42PM (#8174768)
      Looks like someone needs to double-check that with Bill, then:

      "Important: Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems is only compatible with 64-bit AMD Opteron- or Athlon 64-based computers. It cannot be successfully installed on 64-bit Intel Itanium-based systems."

      I don't see any mention of an upcoming Intel it will run on, either.
      • There is already native Windows XP for the Itanium.

      • Re:Simple (Score:4, Funny)

        by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:51PM (#8174851)
        64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems is only compatible with 64-bit

        You will need 64-bit RAM and a 64-bit CPU and the latest versions of Disk64, Monitor64 and Soundcard64 with the extra-fast super-amazing 8064-bit VIDEOZAP ULTRA MEGA ZING FLAPPA ULTREON WOW VIDEO card.

        "Then can I write this 27-line spreadsheet?"
    • For MS to port Windows over the x86-64 is relatively easy when compared to porting it over to a totally different architecture. The way Windows is designed, much of the hardware is hidden. So MS only needs to change the code before the hardware abstraction layer. Furthermore, x86-64 is an extension of x86 so I can't imagine it being too difficult to do. So, if it doesn't cost MS too much, doing this just for AMD is a good way of hedging their bets. If the Opteron takes off in the server market, they do

  • Speculation... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:36PM (#8174703) Homepage Journal
    Now Intel just changed their 64-bit plans, and all of a sudden this appears. Speculate away!"

    I speculate in a couple days Microsoft will deny this release exists, as they suddenly pull it to give their old cartel partner a chance to catch up and save face.

    Consider this:

    Microsoft has an evaluation operating system for the Yamhill before Intel actually ships. That doesn't just look like they've been playing patty-cake, but that Intel is running to keep up with AMD. How embarrassing. What's Moore's Law got to say about this? "Every 2 years Intel will get a little further behind where they need to be, by an ever increasing margin until operating systems exists for processors they haven't even designed yet."

  • Thank you! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Call Me Black Cloud ( 616282 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:36PM (#8174704)

    I appreciate the link to Microsoft's website. I've been looking all over for that thing and haven't had any luck finding it. You've saved me from a lot more time spent searching, my friend.

  • I've been using it for a while. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Sheetrock ( 152993 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:36PM (#8174709) Homepage Journal
    Very crisp. Despite the double memory/instruction access time created by accessing words twice the size of the 32-bit chips, I think they're using the new chaining instruction set to double or triple most of their refresh operations. And it's still got Solitare.
    • And it's still got Solitare.

      Ooooh, I never thought of that! Anyone have the benchmarks on how much faster solitare is in 64-bit? :)
      • Ooooh, I never thought of that! Anyone have the benchmarks on how much faster solitare is in 64-bit? :)

        Yeah. It gets about 520 frames per second on a half-gig video card. The bouncing card animation after winning takes about 0.8 seconds.

    • Despite the double memory/instruction access time created by accessing words twice the size of the 32-bit chips, I think they're using the new chaining instruction set to double or triple most of their refresh operations.

      Yeah, that "double memory/instruction access time" is a doozy. Luckily they reversed the polarity of the "chaining instruction set" to create a discontinuity in the computron field. By rerouting the tachyons to the ALU, they've been able to double-pump the, umm, chain cache.
    • My apologies for asking what is probably a stupid question, but does this thing run existing 32-bit applications as well?

  • Windows Media Player? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ikewillis ( 586793 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:36PM (#8174712) Homepage
    Will the AMD64 build include Windows Media Player? It was left out of the IA64 version due to what I can only assume are 64-bit cleanliness issues with the DirectShow API and WMP code. I can only assume that an AMD64 build would allow 32-bit builds of DirectShow and WMP which execute through the WoW abstraction layer.
    • You don't need to abstract it.

      That's the point. The chip can execute 32 bit code natively. All you need are appropriate 32-bit libraries (DLL's in windowsspeak).

      That's how Linux does it. want a 32 bit app? Install the 32 bit glibc and you're good to go.

      Statically compiled apps need *nothing*.

      • Re:Windows Media Player? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ikewillis ( 586793 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @07:01PM (#8174938) Homepage
        Evidently you haven't heard about the Windows-on-Windows (WoW) subsystem [amd.com] utilized on AMD64 processors:

        "The Microsoft(R) WOW64 (Windows(R) on Windows) subsystem will allow most 32-bit applications to launch seamlessly on 64-bit Windows," said Brian Marr, Windows product manager. "WOW64 is designed to provide interoperability and great performance on AMD64 processors across the 32/64-bit boundaries. As customers migrate to 64-bit Windows XP and Windows Server, they will have a code base that will support both 32- and 64-bit applications."

        While it's wonderful Linux understands multiple ABIs natively, Windows does not, and utilizes WoW to seamlessly launch 32-bit applications on 64-bit builds of Windows.

        • Re:Windows Media Player? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Deagol ( 323173 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @07:15PM (#8175081) Homepage
          How far down will XP-64 thunk, anyway? Are the 16-bit and 32-bit layers at the same level? Or does 16-bit sit on top of 32-bit? So a 16-bit Windows app will be thunked through 2 layers now?

          (Sorry -- I just had to make this post. I remember when all the rags had countless articles on "thunking" when Win95 came out. Will we have the same when the first mass-market 64-bit OS hit the streets? Not that I know of any good PC rags these days -- suggestions?)

  • System requirements (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:37PM (#8174719) Homepage
    Windows XP 64-Bit Edition is designed to address the most demanding needs of technical workstation users who require large amounts of memory

    System Requirements:
    PC with an AMD Athlon64 or Opteron processor
    256MB RAM

    Yeah, I know they're minimum requirements, but it's amusing to think that anyone who needed this OS would actually have to refer to them.
    • "it's amusing to think that anyone who needed this OS would actually have to refer to them." lol

      and since when do people who need/use a 64bit processor think 256MBs of memory is "a lot of memory"

    • Well, doh... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      A Ferrari is designed to address the most demanding needs of car drivers who require high velocity.

      But the "driver requirements" is just a drivers licence and a fat wallet. If your old grandmother would like to use it to crawl to the nearest shop at 20MPH, she can.

      Kjella
    • From the xp_amd64.txt file on the downloaded iso:

      512 megabytes (MB) of RAM (minimum)

      I'm sure that Microsoft would never deliberately mislead anyone, so this must be a simple error on their website or in their release documentation.

      There's a first time for everything. :)
  • We'll probaly have to wait for the next "killer app" (god I hate that phrase) before it becomes mainstream for desktop users. I can't see a need for it on the desktop just yet. Big database clusters on the other hand...
    • The primary advantage of AMD64 applications over IA32 is the increased number of registers that the AMD64 instruction set affords, 8 general purpose registers over the 4 provided by IA32. This can significantly improve performance as it reduces the chance code needs to hit cache or main memory in the event that 4 general purpose registers are not sufficient for the task at hand.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • How's this for speculation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iminplaya ( 723125 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:38PM (#8174726) Journal
    Micrososft is doing this to keep us distracted away from Linux until Longhorn comes out. Two years is a long time, so we can always expect bits and pieces of "neato" stuff in the meantime.
  • It makes perfect sense, everyone knows about the Wintel relationship, that's why Microsoft hasn't made an operating system to run on an apple computer, and has also stopped the flow of any apps that help to do so *ala, virtual pc*, even though apple's hardware is far superior.

    I think the move of Microsoft to put G5's in the Xbox2 will start to shift this although.. Microsoft as well as anyone knows they can't continue to be architecture dependent especially in this new world. AMD has quite a good 64 bit
    • that's why Microsoft hasn't made an operating system to run on an apple computer, and has also stopped the flow of any apps that help to do so *ala, virtual pc*, even though apple's hardware is far superior.

      VirtualPC for Mac can be purchased separately and will come bundled with Office.

      Check your facts
    • and has also stopped the flow of any apps that help to do so *ala, virtual pc*, even though apple's hardware is far superior.

      What are you talking about? Microsoft just released a new, far superior version [microsoft.com] of Virtual PC which is a G4 optimized (last version was not), native OS-X application. It's 20% faster, puts a start menu in the dock, supports copy/paste between windows/mac, supports seamless networking between win/mac, etc.
    • Oh come on, I though you people had special Troll recognition. I've seen subtler trolls under the bridge leading to my house - they always sneak up on me and mutter stuff about eating my bones.

      This guy is 100% troll and it's 110% obvious.

  • Microsoft Sold Me an OS! (Score:5, Funny)

    by tonyr60 ( 32153 ) * on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:39PM (#8174740)
    I went to the site and odered a copy of the CD. First Microsoft OS I have bought for many years, but for $US7.95 (including international delivery) the price is quite reasonable and comparable to the competition.

  • It's an OLD version (Score:2, Informative)

    by Ledfoot ( 75412 )
    It's build 1069. That's the build they gave us back at the AMD Athlon 64 release event back in September. There are newer builds that are supposed to be better (there's a guy on AMDZone.com that has 1169)...

    Basically, if you want to mess with this, go ahead, but there's a LOT of stuff missing and good luck getting drivers for any of your hardware!

  • Intel is not impressing me these days (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AviLazar ( 741826 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:40PM (#8174751) Journal
    I still recall reading the article in Wired magazine a few months back. A company approached them with an offer to provide them perfect diamond wafers (produced at less then $5/wafer) and Intel did not take the offer because they have not gotten their full investment back on the silicon. So given that they refused to have an easy method of increasing their processor spead by a very big number, it is not surprising that they still haven't gotten 64 bit over AMD... Shame, Intel used to be the best. -A

    • Re:Intel is not impressing me these days (Score:4, Funny)

      by HardCase ( 14757 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @07:35PM (#8175290)
      I still recall reading the article in Wired magazine a few months back. A company approached them with an offer to provide them perfect diamond wafers (produced at less then $5/wafer) and Intel did not take the offer because they have not gotten their full investment back on the silicon. So given that they refused to have an easy method of increasing their processor spead by a very big number, it is not surprising that they still haven't gotten 64 bit over AMD


      Yeah, dude, I remember hearing on Art Bell's show about this guy who made a carburator that could get something like 100 miles per gallon in a Lincoln Continental. He took it to all the big auto manufacturers, but they were so tied up with the big oil companies that they turned him down. He threatened to take it to the Japanese car makers and HE DISAPPEARED! It's like the cold fusion technology that the government got from aliens that they're keeping at Area 51...if they let it out, then the oil companies will go out of business. Since the oil companies contribute so much to the politicians, the politicians aren't going to give out that technology. SO WE'RE STILL DEPENDENT ON OIL!!!


      Man, I hear you. I'll bet that Intel has some kind of connection to the silicon industry and they're just keeping us tied to slow chips so that the silicon wafer makers won't go out of business. It's all a conspiracy. I'm so glad that Art Bell is back. I really miss Miss Cleo, too.


      ~h~

  • with 64 bits... (Score:5, Funny)

    by vpscolo ( 737900 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:41PM (#8174763) Homepage
    I suppose it means windows will take 1/2 the time to crash and at least twice as long to write out dump files

    Rus

  • Free? Which kind of free? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Call Me Black Cloud ( 616282 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:44PM (#8174795)

    Damn, I never get it straight. Is this software free as in speech or free as in beer? Since the software is only good for about a year, I'd guess this is free as in beer, because my beer has an expiration date too. But does that mean Linux is free as in speech because it doesn't have an expiry? Of course some really skunky beers don't either. Now, can you have free as in beer in a cathedral? All the cathedrals I've been too serve wine. So is this free Windows free as in wine?

    See, it's this kind of thing that is holding up the adoption of Linux. It's too confusing.

  • I guess... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cytlid ( 95255 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:46PM (#8174802)
    ...the submitter didn't RTFA!

    Important: Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems is only compatible with 64-bit AMD Opteron- or Athlon 64-based computers. It cannot be successfully installed on 64-bit Intel Itanium-based systems.
    • Uh, no. I read the article. That's why I put "If you have an AMD Opteron or Athlon64..." in the submission. Your point makes no sense becasue there is a full version of Windows XP for the Itanium, so WHY WOULD YOU NEED THIS CUSTOMER PREVIEW (read: "Windows Beta")? That's what makes this interesting. It's a version for the Opteron, for x86-64, so it wouldn't run on the Itanium since that's IA64. Nice try.

  • I don't read too much into this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rabtech ( 223758 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @06:53PM (#8174868) Homepage
    I don't read too much into this; Microsoft already told Intel that they (Intel) will in fact stay compatible with AMD because they will not be releasing three separate 64-bit editions of their operating systems (Itanium, x86-64, ???).

    In this case, I think the monopoly is working for us in preventing Intel from fracturing the market, which I am quite sure they would love to do.

    So in this respect, I think Microsoft is just having the usual Microsoft delays. One of the biggest is supporting Read vs ReadExecute memory pages on the x86-64 chips. A Lot of code, including microsoft code (ATL anyone?), breaks the standards and is having to be cleaned up to work.

    In addition, Itanium lacked WMP, DirectX, and many other features that customers will NOT do without on Athlon64 systems, meaning even more development time.

  • ia 64 come on Linux! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ratfynk ( 456467 )
    Thats what happens when you release a Linux friendly compiler. Good. This will only serve to drive Intel toward Unix and Linux. MS hates competition, now the dead chickens caused by MS will come home to roost. Pissing off Intel is a big mistake, the worlds largest chip manufacture will not take this for long.

  • Terrible... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stupid Dog ( 133756 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @07:03PM (#8174959)
    After installing this release on my MSI K8T-Neo Board, I have no drivers for scanner, printer (LPT1 unsupported...), ISDN PCI Card, Wireless LAN card and many other things.

    I spent nights searching and begging for drivers. Thank you Microsoft for bringing this truly Linux user feeling to the Windows platform.

  • Official benchmarks here (Score:3, Informative)

    by hobuddy ( 253368 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @07:10PM (#8175018)

    You can see official AMD benchmark results of various programs running on Windows XP 32-bit edition vs. Windows XP 64-bit edition beginning on page 36 of this PDF [sun.com]. The results have three columns: time in seconds on WinXP 32-bit w/ 32-bit executable, time in seconds on WinXP 64-bit with 32-bit executable, and time in seconds on WinXP 64-bit with 64-bit executable.

  • Microsoft strongly disclaims this is a preview and is not to be used in production systems.

    SuSE 9.0 for AMD64 corrupts my BIOS every second or third time I run it and the next time I try to boot, I have to clear the CMOS and reload default BIOS or my machine freezes at "checking NVRAM".

    Though the chip's been out since October, Nvidia didn't get their 64 bit Linux drivers (for their mobo chipsets or graphics cards) out until January, so I've only been able to get my onboard LAN working with ANY 64 bit Li

  • "Speculate away!"

    I think it's proof of Microsoft's involvement with SCO! Now just bear with me for a sec here...

  • +5 Funny (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kizzle ( 555439 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @07:24PM (#8175164)
    Bla bla beowulf bla bla.

  • Don't hold your breath after 360 days (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Flexagon ( 740643 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @07:28PM (#8175203)

    It's a pre-release copy that will expire in 360 days (which probably means the final will be out by then).

    Not necessarily, maybe not even likely, particularly for something as big as an XP release. Many's the time that Microsoft has slipped a release beyond such dates. And in many of those cases, an update or date extender patch appeared to cover the slippage (sometimes several such patches).

  • 64 bit lies (Score:4, Funny)

    by bl8n8r ( 649187 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @08:23PM (#8175647)
    Finally, we'll be able to have an integer big enough to count the number of lies SCO has told so far.

  • Don't forget IBM in this race. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kid zeus ( 563146 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @08:41PM (#8175786)
    Not only is the G5 a beaut, but the upcoming fabrications, expecte to hit .65 by next year, are supposedly dazzling. With massive heat/energy savings over Intel's competition. Not to mention the predictive gushing over the subsequent G6s, G7s, etc. (yeah, yeah, I know... believe it when it's in front of me).

    Looks like the massive investment Big Blue made in their fab plant is going to be a wise and profitable one. Not only are they producing their own stellar chips, but they're producing for AMD, they just signed a huge deal to produce for Sony, and they're going to be supplying Microsoft.

    My guess is that Intel is sweating.

  • Windows XP 64-bit close to release? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Tuesday February 03, 2004 @11:56PM (#8176947)
    I personally think that Windows XP Home/Professional for the AMD x86-64 CPU architecture is closer to release than people think.

    They're probably right now redoing much of the OS code so it does take full advantage of x86-64 registers, and is waiting for other Microsoft departments to complete their work so an improved version of Internet Explorer 6.01 (Service Pack 2?) and all the Windows XP Service Pack 2 improvements are incorporated into the final version. Don't be surprised that when Windows XP SP2 ships some time this summer we'll see both 32-bit and the x86-64 64-bit version come out at the same time.

  • Still no SATA driver :( (Score:3, Informative)

    by Frodo420024 ( 557006 ) <henrik@fa n g orn.dk> on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @05:22AM (#8178198) Homepage Journal
    Gave it a spin on my shiny new box :)

    No fun, the SATA driver is not included, it doesn't see my hard drive. Guess I'll have to do it the tricky way, modifying the install CD.

    Any Linux's out there in 64 bit versions with a SATA driver out of the box?

  • Confusion (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nmg196 ( 184961 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @06:42AM (#8178383)
    I don't understand.

    In the Top 5 Reasons to move to Windows XP 64 page [microsoft.com] it says things like, "Windows XP 64-Bit Edition has been optimized specifically for the Intel Itanium processor" and many other similar comments. It mentions nothing about any Athlon 64bit processors. Yet on the download page [microsoft.com] it says it only supports the Athlon 64 and Opteron.

    Why the massive discrepancy? If the whole thing is optimised for the Itanium, then why isn't the Itanium even supported by the demo version?!

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