Heat, Intel, AMD, & Internet Cafes

摘要

Last month, I speculated about the future of 64-bit Windows and how many versions of Windows there would be. The situation has apparently become clearer after the Intel Developer Forum. Although its lengthy press release never mentions AMD, Intel has said, in effect, that its new 64-bit chips will be AMD compatible. The story I hear is that Microsoft simply refused to play along with yet another incompatible hardware system. This is good news for the rest of us―the last thing we need is more fragmentation of the software developer market. (Interestingly, it appears that, in turn, AMD will be putting SSE3 instructions into future Opterons. It will be interesting to see if this cross-licensing will be "official" or not) What will you run on these processors? Linux, to start with. There have been native 64-bit versions of Linux for the Opteron since that processor was released. The 64-bit version of Windows originally built for AMD's Athlon64 and Opteron processors, in beta since 2003's WinHEC, should be released by mid year. The product name is "Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems"―a mouthful.