These days there is a fundamental fight between the manufacturers of microprocessors, related to 64-bit architectures. For computer laymen, these companies are betting on unlimited processing power thanks to this new scheme, which replaces the 32-bit one.
Apple was the pioneer with its Power Macintosh G5, the first desktop computer supported by this architecture. It was followed by AMD, with its Athlon-64 line. Intel, the eternal leader of the segment, does not yet have products in desktop computers, although it has already warned that its Xeon line will mutate sooner rather than later towards the new architecture. In the server segment, all three companies offer 64-bit, as Intel here has its Itanium 2.
What generates this change of architecture? It offers increased main memory capacity and very advanced computing capacity. In principle, it would seem that 64-bit offered twice as much processing as 32-bit, according to this misleading arithmetic ratio. But, in truth, the difference is exponential: in terms of memory, a 32-bit processor is optimized to work with a maximum main memory of 4 gigabytes, while a 64-bit one could control up to 4.3 billion times that amount to reach up to 18 exabytes, or 18 trillion bytes.
In terms of processing power, the new architecture can manipulate floating-point math calculations in one go, unlike 32-bit processors, which need to distribute the operation in different stages. This causes the speed to increase exponentially.
To give an example, the G5 reaches 2 GHz clock speed and has the capacity to compute up to 215 instructions simultaneously with symmetric multiprocessing.
When to invest
As always, when technology breaks and offers an innovation, there are many points to analyze before investing in the new option.
In this case, 64-bit processors are being specifically promoted among creators of audio, video and other three-dimensional content (it has had a lot of acceptance among game creators, for example), as a result of its high performance and its great capacity to manipulate main memory.
The first point to consider is the availability of applications. All existing software products that run on 32-bit will also work on 64-bit. And while they will do it faster (because they will use the higher clock speed and the increasing amount of memory), the truth is that they will not take full advantage of the proposed advantages.
This requires software developers to release their optimized products for the new architecture. So far, Adobe released some plug-ins to speed up Photoshop (although it said nothing about Premiere and After Effects, for example) and companies such as Macromedia and DigiDesign, during the launch of G5, announced their intentions to work on the subject, but without concrete announcements. Other companies in the segment, such as Pinnacle, have not yet revealed their plans in this regard. Meanwhile, Apple claims that its FinalCut Pro is optimized for G5.
However, the 64-bit architecture represents a trend of no return. All processor manufacturers, in one way or another, go there and the market offer is mature and efficient.
It is expected that by the middle of this year, particularly after the departure of Intel's 64-bit Xeon (Intel has, by its market share and size, a more important market influence than Apple or AMD), announced for that date, all the absent applications will begin to flourish. And it will be time to notice the difference and live a processing speed that will make the user dishevel in front of his monitor.
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