RE: Where is IBM?

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From: Walden H. Leverich III
>
> MS has been shipping a 64-bit OS (Windows Advanced Server, Lmited Edition)
> for some time, as well as a 64-bit version of XP. A 64-bit SQLServer just
> went RTM.

You know I'm not going to let this slide, Walden.  <grin>

Here are the articles:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/features/highlights.ms
px#64bit

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/64bit/overview.asp


Basically, they say that Windows 2003 supports 40-bit addressing.  As I said
when the announcement was made:

---------------
I'm not sure what the "it" is that they've done.  If you consider 64-bit to
be that they can now load 512GB of a database into memory in order to index
it, then yes, they've done that.  Sadly, that's only using about 39 bits of
addressing, the current limitation of Windows 2003 (as stated in the
articles you quoted).

If, on the other hand, you mean something like single store addressing that
allows transparent access to terabytes of data, then no, they haven't gotten
there yet.  Also, there's no mention of exactly how many APIs have been
converted to 64 bits, or whether the majority will still require "thunking".
Thunking is a rather descriptive term created in the days when Windows first
went "32-bit" but most of the APIs still required 16-bit pointers, and so
you had to "thunk" your 32-bit pointers into and out of 16-bit variables.
---------------

Joe