“The industry is on the cusp of a massive build out. In terms of, we all think “Woe be us, we’re in the technology business,” but it’s not. It’s another 20 or 30 years of exciting applications that haven’t been built yet, that are just waiting to happen. There was a book written in 1981 by a gentleman named Tracy Kidder called “The Soul of the New Machine.” It chronicled how DGbuilt the minicomputer. It’s not a question of if, but when. If he rewrote that book now, it might be the soul of the new machine is going to be the 64-bit microprocessor. No doubt about it. Chief information officers, the men and women that I deal with as publisher of CIO magazine, they look at the world through two lenses. The first lens is...more...

“There are barely enough 32-bit numbers to count the parts of just one person’s DNA. There are more bytes in a 20-minute digital video clip than there are 32-bit tags to index into that stream. And there are many more people in the world than there are 32-bit values to give them each even a single network address. A 32-bit computer can do a lot of things, but it doesn’t have the fingers and toes that it needs to count the things that will interest us in the next three years—let alone the next decade or two. more...

Terence Stephen
Executive Editor, Hardware Mag, Malaysia

In the mid-90s, the leap from 16-bit to 32-bit computing occurred sooner than most predicted. In 2002, the industry finds itself in a similar situation. What parallels do you see between that transition and the one we are about to embark upon with 64-bit computing? What is different?
Moving to 64-bit is the next logical step in the never-ending computing power race. However, computing is more complicated today unlike the time when we migrated from 16- to 32-bit. Not everyone today requires 64-bit computing power, so the transition will not be as massive an exodus as it was back then. Having said that, the alluring idea of the AMD Opteron™ processor that gives you 64-bit as well as 32-bit options will mean that more consumers will finally get a taste of 64-bit power…something that was strictly the domain of the enterprise. more...

Jimmy Tang
Editor-In-Chief, HardwareZone

What will be the first applications to exploit the benefits of 64-bitcomputing on the desktop?
E-commerce applications will benefit a lot with the 64-bit platform. Credit card transactions that require high encryption will benefit a lot from its speedy 64-bit bus. This will probably set the industry moving to even higher bit encryption to further enhance security in this area. Database applications would also benefit a lot from 64-bit computing as db queries and searches would definitely take a lot less time to complete.
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Y.H. Tang
PC Market, Hong Kong

“64-bit computing is the way to go. It will give users more computing power. x86-64 technology will seamlessly transition from 32-bit to 64-bit, hence allowing current applications to run faster. At the early stage, I believe the 64-bit technology should have the capability to let users switch between 32-bit and 64-bit, as required. Therefore, it will fit the needs for now and the future. For desktop users, I see 64-bit computing become widespread at least 2 to 3 years from now.

By having a flexible structure, x86-64 can apply 64-bit computing not only in servers, but also in workstations, desktops and even notebooks. Having a standard and single platform from high- to low-end computers, it will benefit both developers and end users. It will tremendously lower investment costs and thus lower the market price. We see 64-bit applications, tailored for the enterprises, happening at the early stage. If AMD provides more tools and support to developers, we hope to see more x86-64 optimized desktop applications available soon.”

"In this type of economy, the trifecta is, deliver something that lowers costs, increases productivity and does it with minimum risk, so moving to a 64-bit architecture that really plays nicely with my existing 32-bit applications is a big win for most IT organizations because I get all three of those things in one go, versus taking a big risk, and right now, most people don't want to take a big risk." more... .

With all the recent press coverage that 64-bit architectures have garnered, it's fairly common knowledge that a 32-bit processor can address at most 4GB of memory. A 64-bit architecture could theoretically, by contrast, address up to 18 million terabytes. 64-bit computers can process numbers that are 4.3 billion times as large as those processed by their 32-bit counterparts. So, what do you do with over 4GB of memory? Well, caching a very large database in it is a start. Back-end servers for mammoth databases are one place where 64 bits have long been a requirement, so it's no surprise to see upcoming 64-bit offerings billed as capable database platforms. Finally, there is another application domain for which 64-bit integers can offer real benefits: cryptography. Most popular encryption schemes rely on the multiplication and factoring of very large integers, and the larger the integers the more secure the encryption.”

What are the main drivers for 64-bit computing?
Bringing 64-bit computing to the mainstream server and workstation market will have a radical effect on demanding applications. For database servers and visualisation programs that need access to vast amounts physical and virtual memory, the advent of affordable 64-bit hardware will be a watershed. more...