The Windows operating system will have its biggest impact yet on the computing world in its third decade of existence, predicts Microsoft chairman and chief software architect, Bill Gates.
Opening the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2005 in Seattle yesterday, Gates announced the general availability of Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions.
"We are very proud of this major set of releases that will be the base on which we will build the next major version of Windows [code-named Longhorn]," Gates told conference delegates.
"The next 10 years will be the decade of greatest importance, opportunity and competition. That`s why we are putting record levels of R&D into the Windows operating system and record levels of investments into reaching out to the hardware and software development communities," he said.
Gates said WinHEC 2005 this week would focus on the transition from 32- to 64-bit computing, which he predicts will be much faster and easier than the transitions from 8-bit to 16-bit to 32-bit, with the fastest adoption likely to be in the server world.
He said the rapid transition to 64-bit will be driven by the substantial performance benefits from increased cache, the ability to use more registers, greater security at a hardware level, and the ability to continue running 32-bit applications in a 64-bit environment.
"At Microsoft we are seeing a 2.7 times increase in performance for Windows Terminal Server, which is a greater than we expected, and that`s a big deal," said Gates.
He praised chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel for their development of 64-bit chips and said Microsoft was happy with what had already been done in terms of hardware drivers, but urged developers not to lose momentum.
Although keeping details of the user interface under wraps, Gates hinted at some of the visual enhancements to come in Longhorn. However, he gave more details of what was "happening under the covers" regarding security and reliability.
"Longhorn will see the introduction of what we call limited user administrative rights for greater security and better event recording and monitoring to improve reliability," he said.
Gates also highlighted several other Longhorn features and innovations including improved mobility, sharing, collaboration, organisation, search, printing and media capabilities.
"It`s a strength of Windows that we have the breadth of device drivers, and we really appreciate the support we get from all of you on this," Gates told delegates.
"It`s in the spirit of partnership that we`re sitting here looking at what can we do together, and I`m excited to have a chance to see what comes of it," he concluded.
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