IT managers may get excited about the technical possibilities of the AMD64 instruction set architecture, but their bosses want to know what’s in it for them. This white paper (presented in Adobe Acrobat PDF format) gives the answers, explaining the bottom-line benefits of the Opteron and Athlon 64 processors’ 64-bit extensions to the classic x86 architecture.
After a quick look under the hood — explaining the AMD64 scheme’s “legacy mode” and “long mode” versatility, including the latter’s choice of a 64-bit native mode and a “compatibility mode” that runs 32-bit code at full speed under a software setup such as Microsoft’s Windows on Windows (WoW) subsystem — the document delves into the value of extended memory addressing.
With applications ranging from databases and digital content creation to customer relationship management and CAD outgrowing the 4GB limit — and DRAM prices heading steadily south — there’s no longer a reason to settle for the programming complexity and performance penalty of memory-address extension implementations for 32-bit processors like Intel’s Xeon. At the same time, there’s no need to write off a company’s investment in 32-bit software, or spend the time and expense to port programs to an entirely new architecture when AMD64 makes the job easy.
If you’d like a comprehensive, compelling summation of AMD’s “have your cake and eat it too” approach to bringing 64-bit computing into the mainstream, download this PDF (156K).