Sources who have been examining the latest build of Longhorn (the code name for Microsoft's latest incarnation of the workstation stream of Windows), which is supposedly due in Q4 of next year, say that it has "extensive support for the AMD 64 (Hammer) family of CPUs."

Longhorn, which will probably wind up being called something like Windows XP 2 or something like that, includes a completely redesigned and reworked Windows user interface. Its supposedly meant to be even easier to use than previous Windows versions, and of course its gonna look a lot cooler and run a lot slower...

"Not that Longhorn won't support IA64 (Itanium) microprocessors from Intel, though. According to the source who is close to Microsoft's plans, both 64-bit CPUs will be supported when the product is released," writes The Inquirer, here.

well, what can you expect from m$ ? n00bies like them.

I am not sure, but I think that the two processors have sufficiently different architectures that they will require different code. 32-bit AMD and Intel are both i386 architecture, but I think that for 64-bit, you will get an IA64 folder and an AMD64 folder in 64-bit Windows XP, Longhorn, Linux, etc, much as Windows NT4 had an i386 folder and an Alpha folder when the Alpha processor was supported by that OS.

I could be wrong about this, but its possible. It seems to be what the majority of stuff I am reading seems to be saying. But I would be wrong.

The CPUs could still have different instructions or be different endian (i.e. Big Endian / Little Endian - Binary goes the other way round 11110000 -> 00001111).

The Mac's PowerPC is 64-bit but that doesn't mean Windows Longhorn will run on it Shame though cos that would be a nice thought, Windows on a Mac