On Sun, 18 Jan 2004 22:15:05 -0600
Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net> wrote:
>On Sun, 2004-01-18 at 21:01, Alex McKenzie wrote:
>> Joey Kelly wrote:
>> > Emachines (hush!) just put out an Athlon 64-bit laptop for $1500. I
>>want one.
>> >
>> > Bad.
>> >
>> > http://news.com.com/2100-1003_3-5141786.html
>>
>> Hey, they're bigger than Gateway and Apple...
>>
>> So what's the deal with 64 bit computing...Doesn't it require all
>> programs to be programmed/compiled in 64bits?
>
>The AMD64 (encompassing, so far, the Opteron, Athlon64 & FX51 chips)
>design takes that into account. Thus, it has 3 modes:
>1. Only 64 bit OS & apps
>2. 64 bit OS, 64 bit apps, and 32 bit apps
>3. 32 bit OS & apps. (This is how 99% of the Athlon 64 bit chips
> are now being used.(
>
>
>> (I vaguely remember the migration to 32 bits to be problematic, but I
>> was a Mac guy at the time.)
>
>No, because once you get a 64 bit OS, you can still run 32 bit apps.
>
>> Will this fix the year 2038 problem?
>
>No, because the Unix specification is that time_t is 32 bit.
>http://www.opengroup.org/dce/info/y2k.htm
>
>--
============================================================================
The fact that the AMD 64-bit CPUs can run 32-bit programs is the main reason
I bought some AMD stock when it was first announced that this was AMD's
plan. I don't hold any Intel stock (or any Microsoft either!).
When the changeover from 16-bit to 32-bit occurred, the situation was like
this--the 32-bit instruction set is just a superset of the 16-bit, and there
were only minor changeover problems. I think Intel made a big mistake in not
doing it this way again. Who wants to rewrite, or at least recompile, the
thousands of individual programs in a large installation? I don't think
we're going to see a lot of sales of Intel's 64-bit CPUs any time soon.
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Received on 01/18/04
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