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Microsoft lends support to 64-bit push

John G. Spooner CNET News.com

Published: 23 Sep 2003 16:45 BST

Microsoft on Tuesday said it had released a beta version of its Windows XP operating system for 64-bit PCs based on Advanced Micro Devices' new Athlon 64 processor.

Dubbed Windows XP 64-Bit Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems, the operating system will run on PCs with the Athlon 64 chip and also workstations using AMD's Opteron chip, Microsoft said.

The announcement is a key vote of support for AMD, which is attempting to line up a number of software partners to support its new 64-bit chips -- the kinds of partners it will need to support the chip in the company's attempt to reach the upper echelons of the PC market. The 64-bit measurement refers to the amount of memory that a chip can access via the PC's data bus at any one moment.

One of the most notable aspects of the new operating system will be Windows on Windows 64, a feature that allows people who have current 32-bit applications to continue running those applications after upgrading to the 64-bit version of Windows XP. The feature is made possible by the construction of the AMD's 64-bit chips, which support both 32-bit and 64-bit applications.

"We’ve heard from our customers that, until now, the inability to efficiently run 32-bit applications on 64-bit systems has been a major barrier to investing in 64-bit technologies," Chris Jones, vice president of Microsoft's Windows Client Division, said in a statement.

But AMD might have hoped that the beta's debut and the release of the production version of the operating system would come a little earlier.

The beta was originally expected to come out in the middle of this year, allowing AMD to imply that the production version could ship by the end of the year.

While the beta version of the 64-bit Windows XP is available now to Microsoft's testers, the production version of the OS won't come out in the first half of 2004, the company said. A production version of Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 for 64-Bit Extended Systems running on AMD Opteron chips, now available in beta, will also come in the first half of 2004.

One of the chief benefits of moving from 32 bits to 64 bits is the ability to add more memory to a PC. Customers using the new chip and software will be able to use more than 4GB of memory -- the current limit of 32-bit computers.

While most performance PCs sold today come with between 512MB and 1GB of RAM, systems with between 4GB and 8GB will become more commonplace as 64-bit software works its way onto the desktop and as RAM module sizes gain more data storage capacity, AMD has said.

The additional memory will help create more realistic or "cinematic" computer games and also improve the performance of PCs used for tasks such as video editing, according to AMD.

The chipmaker is also working with game developers like Epic and software makers that author video-editing software, the company has said.