Last week's Client-Server News. I will copy a section below with appropriate credit...
|ClieNT Server NEWS |
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New York and London
May 25-29, 1998 Issue Number 251
The Independent Observer of Microsoft, Windows NT
and Other Phenomena
CSN 251-22 Billy Grams
Now this is interesting. We got a report, by all appearances solid,
that Microsoft is building a software emulator for the 64-bit
version of NT-on-Alpha that will let the chip run Win32 apps. That
would mean none of this recompilation stuff or the binary
translation exercises you have to go through with FX32. The Intel
apps would, the report said, run faster than on a 32-bit Intel chip,
sticking it to Intel 'cause Intel doesn't expect Merced to run 32-
bit better than 32-bit processors can. Now you don't suppose that
Microsoft and Compaq are ganging up on old Intel, do you? Meanwhile,
Alpha circles say they have confirmed the authenticity of that
purported "historic" May 11 e-mail message from Dave Cutler claiming
that his team booted "the 64-bit Alpha version of NT to the point
where we can run a command window" (CSN No 250). They say it means a
"fully 64-bit" operating system - kernel, memory management, file
system, addressing and whatnot - are up on the chip - though
admittedly young and fragile. Best guess is that it'll be at least a
year and a half before this puppy sees daylight. If so, it would be
around the time that Merced sees its first boxes. By comparison, Sun
last week said it was going into the second phase of its beta of a
fully 64-bit Solaris running on Sparc. The thing's been out with a
restricted group of early access testers since December. Now 1,200
will be involved. Sun wants to make sure everyone knows that it's
done things differently than SGI or DEC did and the thing's
backward-compatible. That means it will run 32-bit apps because it
includes 32-bit as well as 64-bit libraries and the 32-bit apps will
benefit from an uptick in performance, it says. Sun figures it'll
take the edge off fears harbored by the migration-averse and ease
them into full 64-bitness. The stuff's supposed to go GA around
October. Sun declined to talk about how its counter-Microsoft
Solaris port to Merced is going citing NDAs.
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