“An even bigger endorsement comes from Microsoft Corp., which will begin shipping a 64-bit Windows server operating system for Opteron ahead of the chip’s launch. And in a break from the company’s traditional hand-in-hand relationship with Intel, Microsoft execs are talking up Opteron. They say the AMD chip helps companies that want to move at their own speed. “With 64 bits, some customers are going to want to ease into it,” says Bob O’Brien, group product manager for Windows Server 2003.” Read the article at BusinessWeek.
Windows Server 2003 Supports AMD x86-64
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I wish I could get my hands on a 64-bit desktop computer. I don’t think it will be here for a while. The 32bit transition was spurred on by need; 16 bits imposed real-life, commonly encountered limits. However most desktops today don’t come close to having 4GB of ram installed. When they do, the time for 64 bit desktops will have arrived.
When will Intel or AMD deliver us from the Interrupt Request nightmare ? It’s nice to have a 64-bit processor but what good does it make if we still have to worry about silly stuff like conflicting IRQs ? Todays motherboards have lots of expansion slots, yet try to fill all of them and your PC will soon grind to a halt.
Another contentious issue, the data throughput : why is it so hard to get the kind of graphical subsystem that the SGI folks engineer in their workstations (SGI 320 or 540)? Then we will be proud to say that our 64-bit PC really allows us to be more productive.
The real limit is lower than 4GB today because of the way that the memory is split between OS and applications (usually 2GB/2GB, right?)
Secondly, what IRQ nightmare? I haven’t had problems with IRQs since back in the day of ISA-cards.
This person is going for 20 IDE devices in one system, and doesn’t even mention IRQs 🙂
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0212.0/1413.html
Alot of the configuration and detection issues will be resolved once there is a move form BIOS to EFI, however, until that happens, unfortunately the pain will continue. The only suggestion I have is use external hardware where possible.
I checked the Microsoft site… It doesn’t mention anything about the Opteron. In fact, it says that the upcomming windows server will only run on x86/Itanium. Is it even true that the new server will run on AMD’s 64 bit chips? I can’t seem to verify this anywhere.
Personally I can’t wait for my next desktop system.. It will most likely be a nice Athlon 64 with 10Gb of ram, and a nice 500GB hdd (or whatever is available at the time I scrape enough money togeter for my next computer
)..
The reality is that 4 gig of ram will be readily affordable for home users within about 2 years. A 512 meg stick of DDR333 ram is about US$50 now. Prices should start to fall rapidly on 1024meg DDR sticks soon. Realistically 4 gig ram could cost as little as US $100-150 by 2005.
Plenty of people have a need for huge amounts of ram, engineering workstations and video editing being prime examples. Back in the mid 90s Apple offered up to 768meg on high end machines when 4 meg ram was sufficient to run Windows 3.1.
This forum is filled with people who say a 500 MHz celeron and 64 meg ram is more than anyone needs. The reality is that even the fastest supercomputers are far too slow for many real world applications. An average PC would take thousands or even millions of years to simulate a nuclear explosion or recreate the folding of proteins.
Time is money. My brother is a surveyor, his organisation upgrades their workstation PCs every six months and replaces them every 12 months. Why? Because a mere 1% improvement in productivity is worth 20 hours labour a year or the cost of a new PC.
There are situations where a $5000 PC could literally pay for itself in a matter of days if it increased efficiency by a few percent.
Where, oh where is the ACTIVE development for OpenSourcing the various and awful BIOS’ that run behind the scenes in our machines?
I hate Award, I hate Phoenix.
Look fellows, I have been running 64 bit machines for a while now. You can get used Sun and SGI for pennys on the dollar on the used market. I have a Sun Ultra Enterprise 2. It has two 400 MHz Ultra SPARCII cpus with 2 megs of L2 cache each and has the same performance as my old PIII 800Mhz dualie.
I am starting to take the stance that it is cheaper in the long run to buy a high end Sun or SGI box. You’ll be so far ahead of your friends 32 bit clunker and the machine will last for 10 years. But of course you won’t be able to run Windows. This wouldn’t matter to me since I like IRIX and Solaris.
It’s nice to see AMD is bold enough to break into the 64 bit market for consumers, while Intel is saying the same thing they said about 386s “It’s just for servers”. Now if it does come to pass here is my wish list for motherboard manufactures.
Dual CPU
Dual AGP slots
64 bit 66MHz PCI slots
memory busses 576 bits wide
fire wire
Mere mortals, I laugh at your 32 bit clunkers
Linux uses 1 GB for kernel address space and 3 GB for user address space. Windows NT uses 2 GB for kernel address space and 2 GB for user address space. Windows NT “Enterprise Edition” could optionally support a 1/3 GB address space split.
You seem to have conviniently forgotten old Digital Alphas. The one i had bought didnt cost much, and it made for a hell of a workstation. It wasnt as fancy as your dual cpu dual agp slot box, but it did have 64bit pci, full scsi, hotswappable harddrives, and a case that put all others to shame (sizewise). Not to mention that alphas as MUCH cheaper on ebay than SGI and Sun boxen.
64bit computing has been here for a while, and if you dont mind used, or even just older, hardware, it’s easily done. It also gives you a chance to see how dirty x86 really is.
Those crazy open-source folks. They decided to call their open source BIOS, OpenBios ( http://www.openbios.info ).
windoze imposes on 4gb, only 2gb usable. used to be how dos limits 1mb ram