By John Leyden, VNU Net
Microsoft may be the last out of the starting gate with a stable
operating system for servers based on Intel’s forthcoming 64bit
processor.
The release of a 64bit version of Windows 2000 will be put on
hold until the autumn delivery of servers featuring the 64bit
architecture (IA-64). However, analysts said it could take a
further six months to stabilise the product.
Meanwhile, IBM expects to ship Monterey/64, the result of its
efforts to make its AIX Unix variant source code compatible with
the Santa Cruz Operation’s Unixware, at the same time as Intel
releases its 64bit Itanium processor. Analysts also expect Linux
for IA-64 to beat 64bit Windows to market – albeit as a beta
release.
Releasing a 64bit version of Windows is a key part of
Microsoft’s ambitions to provide a viable alternative to Unix in
the corporate data centre.
However, Rob Enderle, research director at Giga Information
Group, said the final version of a 64bit Windows might be delivered
as long as six months after hardware becomes available. “It’s hard
for Microsoft to do beta tests without a final version of a 64bit
processor,” he said.
The delay is necessary to properly test what will be radical
change involved in moving from a 32bit to 64bit version of
Microsoft’s operating system, said Enderle.
“Microsoft is changing the architecture of the kernel. If there
is a problem with the code it will fail catastrophically as opposed
to resulting in degraded performance, so [Microsoft] will have to
do three to six months of beta tests,” he added.
“The kernel is a critical component and touches everything. As a
result, the consequences of breaking are higher.”
Enderle said that Unix vendors, which already have 64bit
operating systems running on Risc (reduced instruction set
computer) chips, would not have this problem, and that a version of
Linux for IA-64, most likely a beta product, would also beat
Microsoft to market.
Simon Moores, chairman of the Windows User Forum, said Microsoft
lost momentum in 64bit development when Compaq decided to
discontinue support for Windows NT on its Alpha chip.
Stuart Okin, e-platform practice manager at Microsoft, said
there is a lot of 64bit code in Windows 2000 already.
However, he admitted that development of a 64bit version of
Windows 2000 would only come after the release of Windows 2000
Datacenter. With the development of a 64bit Windows allied to the
forthcoming Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, currently in beta 2
release, Microsoft hopes to provide a credible offering for
demanding line of business applications, including ecommerce, data
mining and online transaction processing.
Microsoft’s Datacenter offers all the features found in Windows
2000 Advanced Server, and includes 64Gb of memory and support for
32 processors. It also claims to provide reliability features such
as four-node clustering, process control and network load
balancing.