Re: Apple, Jobs, and the irony of it

[Eric Smith <eric-no-spam-for-me@brouhaha.com>]

hawk@slytherin.ds.psu.edu (Dr. Richard E. Hawkins) writes:
> Wasn't NT on the alpha only a 32 bit OS, however?

The commercially released versions only supported 32-bit addressing,
though it was possible (and easy) to take advantage of the 64-bit registers
and data path.  I used it for simulations before Linux/Alpha was stable
(which happened pretty quickly), and it was much better for 64-bit
arithmetic than any other platform running an MS operating system.

> Something at the back
> of my mind says that it never really was extended to 64 bits (or was it
> extended later?)

Certainly it was.  That was in fact the first Microsoft 64-bit OS.
Betas shipped to some customers, but the product was cancelled.
Microsoft continued development internally because they knew they
would need the code for the IA64.