Why are still not at 64 bits

[Thomas Charron]

On 2/15/07, Jon 'maddog' Hall <maddog at li.org> wrote:
> >   Correction: Windows 2003 R2 x64 supports a full 64-bit address
> > space, and I'm pretty sure Win XP Pro x64 does as well.  See my other
> > message in this thread about how support for those sucks, though.
> Right.  I think you actually made my case, didn't you?  Microsoft did
> not support 64-bit virtual address space until Vista.

  Negative.  XP 64 bit supported pretty much everything that Vista 64
bit supports.

  But no one uses it, unless their applications are specifically
written for it, such as Pro/Engineer.

> >   What would AMD64 (or even the Alpha's feature set) do for the
> > typical end-user?  I'm talking about the people browsing the web and
> > writing email and downloading music and looking at porn.  These people
> > aren't doing 6-way SQL JOIN's or loading the entire US phone book into
> > RAM.  Their PC is plenty fast enough, so long as you clean out all the
> > adware and viruses and other badware.
> I agree with what you have said, but unfortunately the acceptance on
> non-acceptance of 64-bits depends on all of the things that we have
> stated here.  In stages. Stages sometimes take very long to happen, and
> depend on lots of legacy infrastructure being retired, customer demand,
> etc.  And I stand by my assertion that 64-bit programs will not become
> prevalent until Microsoft give 64-bits to everyone, not just "Win XP
> PROs" who happen to buy 64-bit capable machines.

  *nod*

  That's why no one runs XP 64.  No driver support, no application
support.  I don't even believe you could BUY XP 64, you had to get it
OEM.

> Lots of economics also go into how fast 64-bits comes into the
> marketplace.

  ONE key that is now met is all modern x86 chips ARE x86-64 chips,
now that Intel chips are at  EM64 and AMDs are AMD64.

-- 
-- Thomas