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During the
last 6 months the number of articles and press releases
on 64 bit computing have increased substantially, and
that is usually a good signal that something is going
on. We are now in the middle of a war between different
factions that are struggling to get the largest piece
of the pie of the future business.
64 bit computing
is not something new. The UNIX platform has been for
quite sometime in this territory, but this has been
regarded as a very narrow market focused on highly specialised
power applications. Now, while the PC sales sagging
around zero growth the limits of 32 bit computing are
clear. We need something new, more powerfull, more daring
more exciting. The 64 bit computing has that aura of
high performance, it suggests that systems will get
closer to interacting with humans in a more natural
way. We went through a similar process ten years ago
when we migrated from 16 bit to 32 bit computing. The
results are spectacular. From 16 colours to 32 bit colours
is a long way. We can handle multimedia today without
an effort as we couldn't dream a decade ago. Now, we
are on the verge of a new significant jump.
Why 64 bit
is so important? In what way the new generation of processors
will impact our business? If we look at the huge size
of the PC market, upgrading the outstanding number of
PCs with a completely new architecture, is a shot in
the arm for this industry and all the adjacent industries:
photo, film, video, consumer electronics, games, etc.
This will finance the growth in many other areas of
computing bringing the entertainment and PC melted together
into the living room. Not surprisingly, the battle
between Intel, AMD, IBM and others is very fierce.
The consumer
market aside, one of the most important implications
of a more powerfull PC is the transformation of software
from a technical artifact to a business product. The
64 bit software will be built in blocks that communicate,
are powerfull and much more adaptive to complex business
requirements. The translation from business to
technical is more and more realistic. One could compare
the increased quality of the software with the graphical
constructs evolution: at first we had images coming
in large pixels. Then the graphics became more and more
realistic evolving to a level where you almost see no
necessity for improvment. You can read an online-newspaper
and enjoy the quality of the published material without
realising about how the page was created. The technology
became invisible in this case: so good, you don't see
it.
The fact that
the software becomes more natural has an indirect consequence:
the business becomes more fluent in software requirements.
The business will have to adjust and learn principles
of the software development methodology and it will
start to appreciate the importance of structured requirements.
That in turn will force the IT to familiarise itself
with the business language and goals. The IT deliverable
will have a common description that is the result of
a more accurate documented interaction between the business
and the IT. I think that the IT will become very
conversant in business language with a management more
capable and more willing to understand the language
of marketing, sales and accounting. The software development
becomes more and more conceptual to the point where
the software itself will become invisible: you see the
manifestation only.
This new alignment
between the IT and business will be facilitated because
of the vastly increased power of computers, especially
PCs. If we marvelled at how quickly the storage
demand grows, just wait and see what impact the 64 bit
will have on business applications, data storage and
bandwidth! The new software application will be
more complex and more accomodating. The demand for application
development will grow with an emphasis that comes more
from an accounting perspective rather than technology.
Emil Badilescu-Buga
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