THE 64-bit PC running a 64-bit OS finally, officially, became a reality last week. And no, it is not an Apple PowerMac G5, simply because MacOS is not yet available in the 64-bit form. As expected for months, the new kid on the block is AMD's Athlon 64 platform. There were dozens of Athlon64, Athlon64 FX and Opteron boards on the show around, from almost every mobo vendor except SuperMicro, compared to only one Itanium2 offering - a dual-CPU board from, yes you've guessed it right, SuperMicro. While of course we couldn't find any PowerMac G5 clones - cloning Macs is almost as ethically unacceptable as human cloning - the 64-bit tension was palpable. There have been many failed attempts to bring 64-bits to the desktop before, but does this latest iteration of the game justify those demanding such a shift?
Failed attempts
The history of efforts and initiatives to jumpstart 64 bits into the mainstream goes back some 12 years to the ACE consortium when several key vendors, including Compaq, Acer, MIPS and Microsoft, among others, gathered to create an alternative, non-Intel, CPU-independent Windows platform to run the then-future Windows NT operating system. At that time, the MIPS R4000, the very first 64-bit mainstream processor appeared, and soon after, Acer launched a nice high-end 64-bit PC based on that CPU.
News source: The Inquirer
Failed attempts
The history of efforts and initiatives to jumpstart 64 bits into the mainstream goes back some 12 years to the ACE consortium when several key vendors, including Compaq, Acer, MIPS and Microsoft, among others, gathered to create an alternative, non-Intel, CPU-independent Windows platform to run the then-future Windows NT operating system. At that time, the MIPS R4000, the very first 64-bit mainstream processor appeared, and soon after, Acer launched a nice high-end 64-bit PC based on that CPU.
News source: The Inquirer
"We think that wireless is clearly a big deal in mobile computing with 802.11," said Dell.
"In the enterprise market we are very much believers in the scale-out technologies with clusters or grids of servers; two-way and four-way servers.
"The market for larger servers - four-way and eight-way - is going down and the projections for two-way and four-way are going up. In the overall market for servers, about 99 per cent of the volume is for two-way and four-way."
The company is also branching out into new consumer areas, adding an online music service to rival Apple's iTunes, and building flat screen televisions, although there was no indication of whether this would be globally or just for the US market.
Like many of its rivals, Dell is pushing hard into the services sector, with the launch of Dell Managed Services and Dell Professional Services.
Unisys is providing the bulk of the services for Dell, and has to date signed deals with the likes of Axa and Cable & Wireless.
It is targeting those services that are becoming commoditised, such as desktop outsourcing and managing upgrades. Dell confirmed that the company would not be touching the more difficult custom application or development services.
Jon Collins, senior analyst at Quocirca, commented: "Dell has been missing out on this market because it sells direct, so it's an opportunity to have almost a reverse channel arrangement.
"It can use the systems integrators without saying that it is changing its business model."
Using third-party suppliers to provide the services gives Dell more chance of success, added Collins, because it does not have to go through a learning curve in this sector.
Now that's funny
considering that, i think windows will be the first to release a 64bit os
well, Windows XP 64 is already out and being shipped. It is just missing some features that 32bit XP has, these will be added later in a "update" packadge, I think you need to check your facts before talking about mac being first
Windows XP 64 bit Purchas page that is one of the sites that you can purchas from, HP systems with it preloaded. More are coming currently, and the AMD 64 bit version was just put out also.
The topic of the entire f***ing thread is AMD (not Intel) vs. Apple, it's the Wintel fanboys that keep trying to bring the 64-bit Itanium WinXP into the story. Itanic (
doubtful.
i don't doubt that 64-bit versions of windows exist, just that they are highly deprecated. oh wait, then again, this is windows. what was i expecting.
i like how all you pc lovers are ready to bash the mac, but this is the first 64-bit cpu apple has used. excuse them for developing the os... it's something you ms loyalists wouldn't know about.
Windows XP (64bit) == 64 bit //duh!
So whoz saying Apple is making a 64bit OS ?!?!?
You can use a 64bit CPU with OS 10.2.8! The OS does NOT have to be 64bit to run on the 64bit CPU.
Within the OS apps such as Photo Shop can call 64bit routines (and thus use your 64 bit CPU to its max potential) with OUT the OS being 64bit.
It's called backwards compatibility. Got it?
Extermination Edition
Then there is PPC Linux for the G5.
What are you guys babbling about?
Windows XP 64bit edition for AMD has not come out of beta yet.
enough said.
What would the definetion of a 64-bit OS be?
- One compiled where every application included uses 64-bit pointers? Why does mail.app need that?
- One that allows the system to address > than say 100gb of ram?
- One that allows for 64-bit pointer addition without a software cludge?
10.2.7 shipping with the G5s allows all of this. For a consumer _desktop_ system these are mostly of minimal value to almost everyone right now and probably will be for the short-term future (a few years). The only major limitiation for anyone interested in buying a G5 right now is that 10.2.7 has a per-process limit of 4gb - you can have a dozen applications using more than that, but any one program (well process: some programs are multiple processes) can only use 4gb. 99% of the applications in use today that isn't an issue, but if you were dealing with 1000dpi photoshop images at 16' x 9' then that's an issue (of course at point are you likely to be a home consumer?)
Windows XP is also not available in 64-bit form for the Athlon either. The itanium version is
1) The pro version targeted for workstations
2) Not available through retail chains to the best of my knowledge
3) missing so many features as to make it nearly useless to a home user
There is more to life than "std::cout << sizeof(void *);"
Only if you are a home consumer that doesn't know how to use the settings on his scanner and I've seen LOTS of those! Check out some profiles in the Yahoo! chat rooms for proof. I've seen people use 1000dpi or greater for a friggin wallet size picture, and not bother to crop all the white space around the picture, so you have this huge white picture with a small photo in the corner (or the center, usually crooked!).
so what should we believe ? Apple's bloated fake G5 benchmark comparisions ?
Some XYZ (read Inquirer) which usually serves news in a hypothetical fashion posts a controversial topic as per their agenda. And here we have a bunch of losers fighting among themselves over nothing.
this is bull carp
Last edited by 16018 on 30 Sep 2003 - 00:37
edit: i want to see the mac PR/ Martenting people beat this
they will probably just fake some benchmarks etc...
AMD makes chips, like IBM does. Apple makes computers using IBM's chips in the same way that HP makes computers using Intel chips. AMD didn't beat IBM to bring the first 64-bit desktop machine to the masses (hell, IBM wasn't even the first)
Wait, what ever happened to the "G5s aren't desktops" arguements or the "Linux is a server OS" crew that runs around?
Oh, and if you mail me $10,000k I'll ship you a G5 1.6ghz running a build of LFS or BSD compiled for PPC970 with large-mem support enabled. Overpriced and useless, but this is really just an internet prick-waving fight anyway.
Read some of the sensible comments made here by Mac users, I dont want to point to anybody in particular but they make more sense than your excitement over bashing AMD/Intel/Windows.
Its a fact that Apple wont accept and the diehard fanboys refuse to accept. Mac users who have a PC and enjoy both worlds are the right people to judge.
Apple G5 will never be the first 64 bit desktop processor nor will it be the fastest on earth.
The sooner you come to terms with these facts, sooner you will realise that neither of them matters for the Apple platform, its already got a solid OS on quality hardware not revolutionary hardware.
Yeah, it actually is pretty funny, because only a fanboy would make such a big deal about something that doesn't matter at all.
Photoshop is from Apple, so it will have optimizations for G5. Maybe you have no idea about optimizations, man you missed the nvidia episode.
Im not sure but the article didnt even say that the amd 64 offering was running windows, i think it was running a 64 bit linus server edition. But thats still a 64bit os on a 64bit machine. Still counts in my opinion.