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Microsoft will be shifting its products to 64-bit only beginning later this year, Bill Gates told more than 3,500 attendees at the company’s Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Seattle on Tuesday.
It’s a clear message, starting on the server but moving down to the client over time, that 64-bit is pervasive and here to stay. [It] allows us to achieve record levels of performance that even more expensive machines can’t achieve.
The Microsoft chairman and chief software architect also used his keynote at WinHEC to announce the availability of beta 2 releases of three major products: Microsoft’s latest and long-awaited operating system (OS) Windows Vista, its next office suite, Microsoft Office 2007, and Windows Server, codenamed Longhorn.
While the beta 2 of Windows Vista is available, the consumer version of the new OS could be pushed back past the stated January launch date, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at a news conference in Tokyo.
The operating system was due to be launched this year but in March the company said it wouldn't get broad release until January 2007. Ballmer said the planned January launch may slip further based on feedback from a beta release program and the product road-maps of hardware vendors.
"We think we are on track for shipping early in [2007]," the Microsoft CEO said. "We've talked about the month, but we get a chance to critically assess all of the feedback we'll get from this beta release then confirm or move [the launch date] a few weeks. "We put the beta out today ... so we should start getting feedback right away."
Microsoft holds WinHEC to educate its partners on hardware requirements for its upcoming releases and its future roadmap, and obtain feedback on from hardware manufacturers. Gates said the company is taking advantage of processor advances from Intel and AMD to be even more ambitious in what its software can do, calling it a virtuous cycle of innovation.
"As the hardware advances it inspires us to be more ambitious and innovative with our software to take advantage of it," said the Microsoft chairman said. "The innovation feeds on itself."
Gates also said with the release of Exchange Server 2007 later this year all of Microsoft’s products, starting on the server side, would eventually be 64-bit only.
"It’s a clear message, starting on the server but moving down to the client over time, that 64-bit is pervasive and here to stay. [It] allows us to achieve record levels of performance that even more expensive machines can’t achieve."
The next major shift, Gates predicted, would be to multicore processing. That shift is already happening on the hardware side, and Gates said Microsoft is investing heavily to re-architect its software to fully harness multicore.
"If we’re going to keep those cores working for the user and not just sitting idle it’s going to require some very innovative architectural work."
Microsoft’s other major challenge is the expanding device ecosystem, from desktop PCs and laptops to tablets, handhelds and new form factor devices. Gates said the goal is to make it a seamless user experience across devices, and he said Microsoft is investing heavily in new synching technology.
"The PC is in no way standing still and that provides opportunity for all of us, but we need to make sure there are standards so all levels of the stack are working together," said Gates.
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