X-bit labs

News Glance: The Essential Commentary on the Week’s Hottest News (page 4)

Category: Editorial

by Anton Shilov

[ 07/09/2004 | 04:52 PM ]

No Mainstream 64-bit Software to Come Soon?

While AMD and Intel’s processors with 64-bit extensions are generally compatible, some capabilities of the chips are not equal. For example, AMD sports 3DNow! instructions, while Intel sports Hyper-Threading technology. Furthermore, chips may handle different instructions in different way, therefore, Microsoft will need to do some additional work in order to ensure flawless compatibility with Intel’s microprocessors. Moreover, independent software vendors and driver development teams will have to spend some additional time tweaking their software to run well on Intel’s IA32e Pentium 4 and Xeon microprocessors. With that said we may anticipate that the beginning of transition to 64-bit will be generally delayed because of Intel’s problems, but this is something that we need to take a closer look at, software experts tell us.

“Some drivers can be developed even without the final version of operating system or its fully-fledged beta version. Developers should just have appropriate modules or even well-described models of operating system from Microsoft to write drivers. Moreover, they can even “virtually” test the drivers, as they do for hardware that does not yet exist in silicon, e.g., graphics processors at early development stage,” said Zahhar Kirillov, a software expert from Estonian Construction and Building Exchange.

“Another situation is development of application software, e.g., antivirus, office, data-base software. In that case developers need software development kit tailored for particular operating system and hardware. In general, SDK requires final version of operating system, which is not present in the particular case. The absence of well-documented and completely tested development tools will not allow developers to produce applications for 64-bit computers, which will indisputably slowdown the transition to x86-64 systems,” Mr. Kirillov continued.

AMD's outdated vision of software transition to 64-bit

It is necessary to point out that AMD still did not deliver its SDK for Windows XP 64-bit Edition. All the demos that ought to showcase tremendous advantage AMD64 gets in 64-bit mode are created using assembler or some beta tools, which cannot be used for mainstream software.

“In the worst case for Microsoft and AMD the release of operating system for 64-bit extended systems will be postponed as a consequence of the fact that IHVs will not be able to certify their drivers with Microsoft because of absence of proper tools for driver development,” the software expert added.

Currently there are three companies to have publicly released drivers for 64-bit systems: ATI, NVIDIA and VIA. Pretty limited support from IHVs does not inspire a lot of optimism, does it?