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|  | Gary Beach, CIO | | | Peter Coffee, eWEEK | | | Liu Jiuru, China Computerworld | | | Michael Miller, PC Magazine | | | Giorgio Panzeri, Editor in Chief, PC Professionale – Italy | | | Terence Stephen, Executive Editor, Hardware Mag Malaysia | | | Jon Stokes, Senior CPU Editor, Ars Technica | | | Jimmy Tang, Editor-in-Chief, Hardware Zone | | | Y.H. Tang, PC Market, Hong Kong | | | Martin Veitch, IT Week, United Kingdom | | | Mike Vizard, CRN |
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Studio 64
Peter Coffee
Technology Editor, eWeek
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“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.
Even if a particular application doesn’t need the elbow room of a
64-bit platform, it may still be much more useful in that environment. Look
at the migration path from 16- to 32-bit desktop machines: users enjoyed
better memory management and far more capable multitasking on 32-bit hardware
for almost ten years—throughout the mid-’80s and into the early
’90s—before their mainstream applications made the move to 32-bit
APIs. The stage is set for a similar transition, with 64-bit hardware and
operating systems enhancing the value of 32-bit code while also meeting
next-generation needs.
If anything, the 64-bit move will be demand-pulled—rather than technology-pushed—by
consumer demand for the quality and convenience of on-demand digital video
and by the mass-market economics of immersive entertainment and interactive
games. Add the need to do all these things, and more, securely on public
networks, and 64-bit systems are a pre-sold proposition.”
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