Quote #1

"Today the 64-bit market is dominated by high-end proprietary systems. This will change dramatically over the remainder of the decade. Industry-standard 64-bit architectures will move down to the low-end of the market and up into the mid-range and high-end segments as well. The people who understand this, and who adapt their applications for these industry standard 64-bit boxes, will win big-time when these systems become available. The folks who ignore this trend and continue to focus their efforts on proprietary platforms will soon be in trouble, if they’re not there already."


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Video - View

"64-bit computing is becoming a standard in different industry segments at different times. For example, today in high-end systems, 64-bit computing is the standard, although there are lots of different architectural approaches to doing that. Sun has a proprietary limitation in their SPARC processors. Compaq had one with Alpha. IBM with Power, and so forth. Today, at the high end of the server space, 64-bit computing is already here because most of those boxes go out with 8, 16, even in some cases, 100 gigabytes of physical memory. Low-end servers today are going out with 512 megabytes, maybe 1 gigabyte, but if you look at the trend, it will be 2 gigabytes, and 4 gigabytes, and 8 gigabytes, over the next two or three years. So if we don't have 64-bit architectural solutions even in the low end by 2005, it's going to really put a crimp in what people can do with entry-level servers.."


Audio - Listen

"As a matter of fact, if you look at where we are in terms of all these different segments of the market, and you make some typical projections about people spending more or less constant amounts of money in a system for memory and then you look at the way memory prices have come down. You can see that today, midrange supercomputer mainframes, they're all above 4 gigabyte boundary in terms of typical system configuration, and that is when people are going to go "Why did I buy a 32-bit processor that can't address all the memory I just paid for?" So, that is when the pressure comes for 64-bits."


Quote #2

"All I know is that people keep using lots of memory, and every time memory gets cheaper, they use more of it. And so, as the memory prices come down, people put more in systems. Once they put it there, they want to be able to address it and use it. And that is where the 64-bit equation comes in."

Quote #3

"It took ten years to fully recognize the benefits of the move from 16-bit computing to 32-bit computing, with the introduction of Windows 95," said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst for research firm Insight 64. This migration to 64 bits probably won't take as long, since the chips will be offered at competitive prices, but it does take some time for operating system and application vendors to catch up with the benefits offered by new hardware technology,” he said.
http://pcworld.shopping.yahoo.com/yahoo/article/0,aid,107058,00.asp

Quote #4

"Now we're approaching a point where people need more than 4 GB of memory, and they can't get it. Those 32-bit processors are running out of gas," said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst with Insight 64 and moderator of the panel. "Today, the four-gigabyte limit is starting to pose some problems. Those problems are with large databases and digital media. For example, a digital camcorder can easily generate more than 4 GB of data, which couldn't all be loaded into memory for editing on a 32-bit processor. People feeling the 32-bit limit now are in the heavy engineering/computer aided design segment, where it's easy for designs to go way over the 4-GB limit,” Brookwood said.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,53998,00.html


AMD Developer Symposium

Read Nathan Brookwood's entire Keynote Address at AMD's Developer Symposium, download the pdf.

Nathan Brookwood
Keynote Address (.pdf document)
AMD Developer Symposium
September 24, 2002
Sunnyvale, CA