Just before Christmas, Microsoft finally made Release Candidate 1 of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition available to testers. The server variant is also now available. After repeated delays, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition is now due to ship in the first half of 2005.
If previous experience with Microsoft operating system releases is replicated, Build 1289/RC1 will be followed by a further release candidate (RC2) and then the marketable ('gold') version. If no further problems emerge, Windows XP Professional x86 Edition could reach gold status by the time of the CeBIT show in March.
The route into the 64-bit world was accelerated thanks to AMD's AMD64 technology, which is used in the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX desktop processors and in the Opteron server chip. In contrast to Intel's Itanium, AMD's 64-bit architecture can handle 32-bit code very fast, which makes for a smooth transition to 64-bit computing.
Intel has been non-committal about this state of affairs, the official line for a long time being that "nobody needs 64 bits on the desktop right now". This then became the promise that: "as soon as an x86 64-bit Windows operating system is available, we will support it". The open source Linux operating system has been available for some time for AMD's x86-64 platform. However, 64-bit computing will only take off in the business market once 64-bit Windows is available, since most business users currently work with the Microsoft operating system.
