Business

64 bit power to the people

The release of Intel`s second-generation 64 bit processor, the Itanium 2, will spark a wave of change in the computing world, from top to bottom.

30 July 2002

Computing power always increases by a factor of eight and doubles with every evolution. We started with eight bit processors, moved up to 16 bit, then 32. This is because computers usually work with eight bit registries – little pieces of silicon that store the data on the chip, which affects speed and how much memory the system can take. The obvious next step is the 64 bit machine, which will eventually be superseded by 128 bit in the distant future.

Intel may not be the first with a 64 bit offering, but it certainly will have the most visible impact on computing. While IBM and the rest have had their processors hidden in the closets of the largest computing farms of the planet with their RISC-base (reduced instruction set computing) systems, Intel plans to bring 64 bit to the common server, the workstation and, one day, the desktop.

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