john fleming wrote: > I have been reading about the 64 bit processors coming out to target > desktop > computing and have resigned myself to putting off any new technology > till pci express comes out. > What do you folks think the value of 64 bit for home computing is going > to be and is it realistic that 64bit and pci express will both be > workably implemented in the next year?
AMD has made it clear that their future is 64 bit. If you want the latest, greatest processor, it will be an Opteron or Athlon-64 (depending on price point). Intel is lagging, mostly because IA64 was such a disaster. The time when you NEED a 64 bit architecture is when you have more RAM than a 32 bit CPU can address efficiently. For Linux, that's 3 GB. I'm not sure what the limit is for Windows XP. Most home users won't reach that limitation for a few years yet, but they will get there eventually. There have been 64 bit workstations for a long time. I think DEC's Alpha boxes were the first purely 64 bit systems around 1990 or '91. The MIPS R4000, in SGI's Onyx and Indigo II circa 1993, was 64 bits. Sun has had SPARC64 since the mid 1990s too, no doubt Beaker or Jack can elaborate. I don't know exactly when the first 64 bit Power/PowerPC chips were. -- Bob Miller K<bob> kbobsoft software consulting http://kbobsoft.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ EuG-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
