Two of the biggest forces in the IT industry called on developers to begin porting their applications to x86-based 64-bit architectures.
Microsoft and Intel said hardware and software pieces are in place to convert the computing industry away from a 32-bit Wintel ecosystem to a world where all platforms, from servers and workstations through desktop and mobile, can run at nearly twice the speed with a larger address space.
"The message is: Develop for 64-bits now. The transition is underway," Pat Gelsinger, a former CTO at Intel, said during his keynote at the Intel Developer Forum here. Gelsinger also said by the end of the year, about 100 percent of servers Intel ships will come with Intel's EM64T 64-bit addressing.
Jim Allchin, Microsoft vice president, joined Gelsinger on stage with a message to developers that Microsoft would release its first Windows x64 Editions in a month. Microsoft also said it would stand by Intel's latest virtualization technology as well as its I/O Acceleration Technology in a future version of Windows Longhorn Server.
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