Monday sees the official launch of 64-bit versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition will be capable of supporting 64-bit processors from both Intel and AMD.
In a technical document discussing its 64-bit plans, Microsoft outlined some of the advantages of the new OSes, as compared with existing 32-bit versions. In terms of virtual-memory support, 64-bit Windows will handle 16 terabytes, as compared to 4 GB for 32-bit Windows. System cache size jumps from 1 GB to 1 TB, and paging-file size increases from 16 TB to 512 TB.