Microsoft to Launch 64-bit Windows on Monday 484
maotx writes "Several news outlets are reporting that Microsoft will officially roll out 64-bit versions of its Windows operating systems on Monday. As compared with existing 32-bit versions: 64-bit Windows will handle 16 terabytes of virtual memory, as compared to 4 GB for 32-bit Windows. System cache size jumps from 1 GB to 1 TB, and paging-file size increases from 16 TB to 512 TB."
Are there any 32-bit-only OSes left worth mention? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Windows the last major commercial OS to add 64-bit support, or are there others I'm missing?
(Even if it is the last one, I'm sure Microsoft will tout this as supremely innovative.
This is only years later than Linux (Score:0, Insightful)
Third party apps (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Microsoft going to have a similar problem, in that it has a nice OS, but few apps to run on it?
Re:Are there any 32-bit-only OSes left worth menti (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm at a loss for words (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, this is a quantum leap in computing. The leaps have gone in the sequence 4,8,16,32,64. I leave it as an exercise for the student to determine what the next quantum leap in the sequence might be.
Now, let's not always see the same hands.
MS simply made the jump a bit later than some.
AMD supplied the needed energy to jump to the next, ummmm, shell, by applying a cattle prod to their collective posteriors.
KFG
And they're releasing it just in time! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:World-Leader (Score:4, Insightful)
The scary thing is that there are likely people who believe this.
I am curious though, I wonder if the 64-bit Windows version can easily switch to 32-bit, a la Solaris?
Re:Uhm (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uneeded. (Score:3, Insightful)
Please not again this "why is the maximum 1000, NOBODY will ever use more then 10" talk.
Why should it be limited to less than 512TB? Any reason for such a thing? No.
and it will still choke on the registry... (Score:2, Insightful)
Plus, it will swap everything out to disk even when there's terabyte of free RAM no matter how hard you plead with it not to!
Seriously, when will Redmond stop eutrophycating and start engineering this platform, that once showed so much promise?
Re:Paging file (Score:3, Insightful)
The only upside here is that my friends are still replacing their old Windows machines on a regular basis and giving away their old hardware as "scrap". The last machine I got was a 1.6GHz machine with 256MB of memory and a 40GB hard drive. It's now serving as our company's chat server.
virtual memory or page file... (Score:2, Insightful)
2GB limit for a single process is gone! (Score:1, Insightful)
Everything else isn't really a benefit but actually decreases performance by a small amount (either increase memory usage and/or increased time due to increased memory usage)
It always makes me laugh when people think that 64bit is like the magical bullet of performance. For 99% of people, there is no reason to change for a few years yet.
Re:I don't know abou this... (Score:2, Insightful)
"What ?!?!? I can't get that.
"Well, can I have a Western Digital 64 Terrabyte hard drive please.
"Oh ??!?! I can't have that either."
Wake me up in a few years when there is some point to all this.
Re:I don't know abou this... (Score:3, Insightful)
So let's look back at the unexpected developments with previous jumps in microprocessor power:
1973 - 1976 -- 4040 - CPU chips enter geek consciousness. Public discovers interactive television as 'PONG'. A cubic foot of TTL chips on PCBs replaced by a handful of programmable chips.
late 1970s -- Z80 - Accountants stunned as changing a single entry in columns of figures recalculates them all instantenously. Typists amazed at being able to just hit a backspace key to change a misstruck letter, and printing a page after the mistakes have been corrected.
early 1980s -- 8086 - IBM makes it possible for you to convince the boss to buy the PCs that makes your office work shine.
late 1980s -- 80286 - GUI PCs transform symbol and visual-based professions. Photo editors, SPICE, MIDI, AutoCAD, PCB autorouter programs appear. IBM PC clones replace 8-bit BASIC trainers in the home.
early 1990s -- 80486 - Windows and Wolfenstein and Wavetable soundcards.
late 1990s -- Pentium One - Internet and MP3 revolutions
early 2000s -- MultiGigHz Pentiums - Home libraries, 5000 music albums on a $100 hard disk (music industry freaks out), full movies on 15 cent CDs, home PCs doing professional level advising (law, medicine, etc..), near free global communication, primitive language translation, speech-to-text
late 2000s -- the TeraByte era - you tell me!!
Pricing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:still a 32-bit file system? (Score:2, Insightful)
Plus I have no problems with having a dual boot setup and it's quite functional.
As for VMWare, VMWare is not free unless you warez it, and really VMWare has several limitations. Eg. Multisim 7 runs very slow, 3d applications just don't work, etc (it's a good product otherwise, I love VMWare for what it can do)
I need these applications and I have no choice in my need of them unless I seek another profession. If I had all the software I needed under Linux, I probably wouldn't bother with dual booting. But reality dictates otherwise...
A second PC is something I have used for a long time, but then that second PC got outdated, and I don't want to spend the money on another PC. Keeping one computer upgraded is enough of a financial burden on me, two is just not realistic.
Re:gee, pretty impressive timing... (Score:3, Insightful)
NT on Alpha 10 years ago was NOT a 64 bit os. It was a 32 bit OS running on a 64 bit cpu.
but they blew it. as did everybody else.
Tell that to my dual 667 Alpha7 box that I've had for almost 6 years now running 64bit Linux.
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Except of course to help force people back into the upgrade cycle.
"just beacuse" isnt a reason to do something.
Re:Are there any 32-bit-only OSes left worth menti (Score:1, Insightful)
It's also worth noting that adding 64-bit support to a PowerPC-based OS is much easier than adding it to an x86-based OS. PowerPC was designed with 64-bit operation in mind, x86 was not.
Prior to "Tiger," the best OS X could do was to support 4GB of memory per processor, with a maximum of 4GB of memory given to one application (because of the 32-bit address map).
Windows XP has been able to do that in PAE mode ("Physical Address Extension") for years now. That's why two years ago you could buy 32-bit Xeon systems with 12GB of memory from Dell (and you still can).
Given the nature of the move to 64-bit architectures, I think the industry as a whole is doing quite well.
If you want to bicker about Windows x64 vs. Tiger, then Windows clearly wins. In Tiger, GUI apps can't be 64-bit (you have to write 2 executables to support 32-bit graphical output from a 64-bit backend service). Windows x64 has no such limitation.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's a logical step in the advancement of computers.
I can remember a good 17 years ago debating with a "computer expert" about hard drives. He said that nobody would ever need anything bigger then a one megabyte HDD. I still think about that and smile.
Back then, nobody could predict the way computers would shape our lives. Now, of course, we know.
Small steps in the advancement of hardware and software typically don't revolutionize our use of computers, but putting them all together has a dramatic effect. So we've started a shift towards 64 bit. We've got the hardware, and now we're getting the software. Yes, at first it won't be a big deal to the end users, but that leap will ultimately give us more power and flexibility to do more advanced things.
We've got a lot more we can do with computers, and not just with games. Parsing human speech into text, for example, is currently pretty bad. Being able to recognize features in an image is rudimentary at best. No, a 64 bit OS won't change that, but it will lead to a better hardware and software base to make it easier for developers to approach those goals.
Moving to 64 bit is not being done "just because", it's being done as a step in the continued evolution of computing technology, which leads to better advances down the road.