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Windows Reaches 64-Bits, For OEMs

Posted by timothy on from the grand-innovations dept.

thatrez writes: "Microsoft 's Windows Advanced Server, Limited Edition, is now available for computers based on Intel's 64-bit Itanium chip. The Itanium chip supports greater amounts of system memory and offers stronger floating-point, or mathematical, capabilities than current 32-bit desktop processors. The extra memory support and the floating-point capabilities increase the performance of Web hosting, data warehousing and other applications." Now available in this case means that certain OEMs will soon be selling systems loaded with 64-bit Advanced Server, and later other manufacturers will join in. 64-bit versions of XP are expected sometime next year as well.

4 of 365 comments (clear)

  1. Finally... by jason_z28 · · Score: 0, Troll

    64 bits for the two bit OS.

  2. NO! IA64 provides WEAKER floating-point capability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll


    offers stronger floating-point, or mathematical, capabilities


    NO, NO, NO!!! Early on in the development of the 64-bit platform, there was a huge disagreement between the Intel & HP engineers over floating-point mechanics. The Intel camp wanted floating point calculations in hardware, but the HP people insisted on floating point calculations in software. HP won the argument when Intel was confronted with the fiasco of the Pentium floating point recall.


    Itanium performs floating point operations in SOFTWARE, not in hardware. Its strength is the integer manipulations needed for database searching and sorting, not the floating point operations of interest to graphics artists and gamers.

    &nbsp

  3. Brilliant Observation !! by VividU · · Score: 0, Troll

    So you should'nt use....it unless you need it?

    You need to post on Slashdot more.

  4. Not a great webserver by Matrix12 · · Score: 0, Troll

    There are some big drawbacks to the Itanium platform in general :

    1. Runs really hot
    2. Uses a lot of juice
    3. Usually requires a large form factor to house all of the fans it needs :)

    You can get a better bang / buck ratio with a Sun box for example.

    I've used Itanium boxes w/ XP beta (some of my code is on the CD), and I didn't notice a huge performance increase (that may be because of WoW).

    .\\12