{"id":47,"date":"2007-03-22T23:15:18","date_gmt":"2007-03-23T05:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d2.degen.net\/?p=91"},"modified":"2007-03-22T23:15:18","modified_gmt":"2007-03-23T05:15:18","slug":"64-bit-computing-%e2%80%93-a-reality-ahead-of-its-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/?p=47","title":{"rendered":"64-bit Computing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c A reality ahead of its time"},"content":{"rendered":"

There have been many great advances in desktop computing over the years; and some truly great ones, that fail miserably. The Apple Newton, IBM PC Jr, RAMBUS Memory, 64-bit implementations of software on desktop PCs come to mind \u00e2\u20ac\u201c OK well, maybe not the PC Jr., but back on point. 64-bit processors, their respective OSes and more specifically the applications that are available for them, continue to make one ponder, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When will 64-bit computing become a reality?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"Alpha<\/a><\/p>\n

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In that question lies the problem. 64-bit environments are a reality now, and have been for over a decade; we just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t really expect them to be, so as businesses, consumers, enthusiasts and the industry as a whole, we propagate a self fulfilling prophecy that the technology is not ready for prime time.<\/font><\/p>\n

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And before I get barraged with, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, Actually\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d responses about how you use 64-bit Oracle or other select server applications, this diatribe is focused primarily on the desktop, though an argument can be made about the sad state of adoption on the server side as well (I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll just save that for another time.) \u00c2\u00a0<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Dispelling Myths<\/em><\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

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Contrary to all the industry press, bloggings, and snappy AMD\/Intel ads and press-releases; 64-bit platforms have been available for some time. I little history lesson is in order. <\/font><\/p>\n

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My first experience with a true 64-bit box was in the early 90\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, the DEC Alpha AXP. Ah, Digital Equipment Corporation, I get a little teary eyed at the thought. Great company, superb engineering, solid performing systems and terrible marketing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so it should be no surprise that many of you might not even recall the AXP systems.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>At 150 Megahertz the AXP was blisteringly faster than the flagship Intel chip of the day, you might remember that one a little better, this new thing called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Pentium\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, it topped out at 90 MHz. And for an OS, you could run Windows NT (the now defunct Alpha version), OpenVMS, or DEC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Tru64Unix. While most of these machines are now collecting dust in IT bone yards, a few continue to find life with 64-bit Linux distros for the Alpha.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"Sun<\/a><\/p>\n

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The next 64-bit offering to grace the stage, Sun Microsystems Ultra Sparc. What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that?\u00c2\u00a0You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t remember who Sun is? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ok they seam to have a problem with their identity too, but back in the day, the 90s, Solaris was king of the go-go Unix powered internet bubble. The Ultra line of chips was to power 64-bit Solaris running from the largest datacenter on down to the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153workstation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on your desktop. Heck, there were even a few OEMs who engineered notebooks with these. Still not ringing a bell? Humm, well that explains a lot about Sun\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s current dwindling market share.<\/font><\/p>\n

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So if both of these have left you scratching your head surely you will recall the first major 64-bit offering from Intel.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>Merced, or it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s current brand name \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Itanium. Intel started hyping the crap out of this dog before the turn of the century (oh its so weird to use that expression to describe the 1999 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 2000 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 2001 time period.)\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>In case you missed it, we where all going to stop buying Pentiums, as they were scheduled to be discontinued shortly after the Itaniums started shipping. After all, why would anyone want a 32-bit processor when they could have a new 64-bit one running at a slower Megahertz that was both pin and code incompatible with the x86 architecture. Not so much.<\/font><\/p>\n

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Then there was Apple. Surely Apple with all their technical prowess, engineering experience, and marketing appeal could make this 64-bit thing work! Well they did get the science part right \u00e2\u20ac\u201c partly. It was the Macintosh G5, billed as the worlds fastest micro computer<\/a> and 64-bit through and through. And at it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s core, the G5 chip and memory interconnects\u00c2\u00a0have 64-bit data paths; but OSX, while certainly capable of running in a pure 64-bit mode, opted to go with only 64-bit extensions for large memory addressing. But never mind, it turns out that the PowerPC chips that were so fast, got replaced by those 32-bit Intel chips; those ones that were sure to be phased out by 2003, what where those called\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 oh yea Pentium I think it was. Been so long since any of us have seen one of those.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\u00c2\u00a0\"G5<\/a><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

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\nSoftware –\u00c2\u00a0 <\/span>cause I still haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t found what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m looking for..<\/em><\/strong><\/font>\n<\/p>\n

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Where are the Killer 64-bit apps? There lies the crux of the whole thing. In fact one could ask where are the sorta killer 64-bit apps, or where are the simply ok-but-working 64-bit apps. <\/font><\/p>\n

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In each of the previous 64-bit mis-steps, chronicled above, there was not the single quintessential force required to drive adoption, good software. And here is the sad part, since those ill-fated attempts of the 90\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0-\u00c2\u00a0what has changed? Not a heck of a lot.<\/font><\/p>\n

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You think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m exaggerating? AMD has offered its Opteron and Athlon 64-bit architectures for a couple of years now \u00e2\u20ac\u201c how many of you are running the AMD64 version of World of Warcraft? \u00c2\u00a0<\/span>Oh that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right, that product does not exist.<\/font><\/p>\n

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What AMD is not mainstream enough, too fringe \u00e2\u20ac\u201c let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s look at Intel. Itanium, 64-Bit Xeon and Core based systems have been in production even longer, How many people do you see running Half Life 2 for XP Pro x64 version?<\/font><\/p>\n

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Frankly I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to take for 64-bit solutions to take hold! I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been hearing the rhetoric about how life changing the 64-bit apps are going to be, for over a decade now, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just not happening. Its time the industry either gives up on 64-bit on the desktop or build something that makes users value this fancy \u00e2\u20ac\u0153new\u00e2\u20ac\u009d technology. <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There have been many great advances in desktop computing over the years; and some truly great ones, that fail miserably. The Apple Newton, IBM PC Jr, RAMBUS Memory, 64-bit implementations of software on desktop PCs come to mind \u00e2\u20ac\u201c OK well, maybe not the PC Jr., but back on point. 64-bit processors, their respective OSes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple","category-business-industry","category-linuxunix","category-windows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.degen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}