Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Ted S. Warren/Associated Press
Bill Gates spoke on Monday at a Microsoft engineering conference
Microsoft Releases Software for 64-Bit Computer Systems
By LAURIE J. FLYNN
Microsoft announced yesterday that it would begin selling new versions of its Windows operating system that take full advantage of high-performance computers that run 64-bit processors.
The new programs, called Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition, are available for servers that use 64-bit chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, and offer higher performance than systems based on the widely used 32-bit chips.
Separately, Microsoft announced that it had hired Chris Liddell to be its chief financial officer, replacing John Connors, who left the position in late March to join Ignition Partners, a venture capital firm.
Mr. Liddell was previously chief finance officer at International Paper, and before that chief executive of the forest products business Carter Holt Harvey, one of the largest public companies in New Zealand.
Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates, told Reuters that Mr. Liddell would bring a "new perspective" to the company. "We've done a number of acquisitions and Chris can help us execute on those," Mr. Gates said.
Yesterday, Mr. Gates was at an annual Microsoft conference for computer hardware engineers to announce the new software for 64-bit processors. "It's a very big deal for us," he said at the conference, calling the program "part of the foundation for a new generation of faster, more powerful hardware and software."
Work stations and servers based on 64-bit processors represent only a fraction of systems in use in corporations today, and those run either Linux, Unix or a version of Windows that Microsoft released last year for Intel's Itanium chip. With the arrival of the 64-bit Windows systems, business customers now have another option. "We haven't had a mainstream operating system until now," Rob Enderle, a software consultant at the Enderle Group, said.
Sixty-four-bit computing, which is able to use more memory, speeds up tasks like database searching and number-crunching, and allows more users to be attached to a server.
Business customers are expected to benefit first from the new Microsoft programs because software applications have already been written that exploit the new functions. Ultimately, other customers will benefit as well, as video software and graphics-oriented programs using the new systems become widely available.
Mr. Enderle said consumers would see huge performance improvements when running games on the new operating systems. Software developers, he said, would be able to "provide a more realistic virtual reality" than ever before.
In conjunction with Microsoft's news, Dell and Hewlett-Packard both announced 64-bit business computers that exploit the new software.
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