I dont know if this accurate, but,,,, Jerry Sanders did a favour for Bill Gates in a legal case and Gates repaid the favour by adopting AMD's 64bit implementation.
It would tickle me something funny to think I had an IBM CPU of some sorts all this time. Other than a single Cyrix CPU from back in the day, everything I have owned has been either AMD or Intel, just like most folks (primarily AMD). A bit off topic, but does anyone other than myself remember Cyrix? It's sad to think that we once had 3 major CPU developers and for a moment in time, they even outperformed Intel and had they not been bought by National Semiconductor who had no interest in independent development (basically ending their goal to compete), we may still have had more alternatives. I think of how hard AMD had to push themselves in recent years (prior to AMD Ryzen) and the idea that we almost were stuck with only Intel in the world, really leaves me feeling uneasy. Competition is a healthy thing to have in any industry.
I have no idea what was my first CPU, since I was still a kid when I had gotten my own PC (our old one, once we had upgraded to a Dell Dimension 4700 with a single-core 32-bit Pentium 4 2.80Ghz with HyperThreading). But the first CPU I knew that I owned, was a 64-bit Atom N455 (with support for up to 2GB of DDR3-1333 RAM) in my first laptop, the Inspiron Mini 1018. I own both Dells now, with the desktop having been upgraded to a single-core 64-bit Pentium 4 3.60Ghz with HT (alas, the motherboard does not support dual-core CPUs, despite it's 64-bit support) and waiting for a better CPU cooler (I am trying to get ahold of an OptiPlex/Dimension SFF CPU cooler to that end), and the laptop awaiting a replacement keyboard ribbon cable holder, as well as experience (plus an optical microscope) in CPU soldering from me (I wish to upgrade the CPU to a slightly newer (and slightly faster) N5xx Atom). Nowadays though, I own PGA4xx, LGA755, and LGA1156 CPUs and motherboards (I''ll post information about the laptops once I know the details, I just got a few old ThinkPads that require repairs).
I had a 66Mhz Pentium (1993-1994 edition) with ISA sound blaster card. Overclocked it to 100Mhz via dip switches. It outperformed anything at that time, mostly because of sound acceleration. DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95. Commander Keen, Wolfenstein3D, Doom, Heretic, Quake. Good times. Nowadays, 16bit is dead. 32bit will naturally die in the next decade, too.
John not Windows 10 - What's Next after Windows 10. NGMOS (Next-Generation Microsoft Operating System) = Windows MMXX It has taken socialists a very long time to get this far and we are pleased that they are nearly there. @MmxX
PowerPCs.. irrelevant. PC Games were first made for MS-DOS and Windows. x86. Deal with it. Windows 7 does a s**tty job at running native 16-bit code, you were thinking about XP (also s**tty) and 95/98. And there are so many emulators available working flawlessly even on Windows 10 x64 Insider Preview. Does it make 16-bit any less dead? Same will happen with 32-bit.
That is not true. I am sorry. I actually talked about performance, not games that should be first on powerPC. But here we go..... It has started with far more games on the 680x0 platform and it was superior to the 80x86, as said firstly. Game consoles such as Sega used this CPU as well. And the Amiga for instance (680x0) had an OS called workbench. It already had 'windows' to move and multi tasks before M$ came up with 'windows'. The Amiga was the most used 'PC' for gaming with own sound chip and 4096 colors. There was a marketing fight what can be considered as a 'PC' at all. And the competitors to Commodore stated that the Amiga cannot be considered as a PC, but that is just a joke. Later then with the Pentium the x86 platform took leadership in gaming. And concerning Macs. Macs had two major changes. From 680x0 to powerPC and again from power PC to Intel. The 80x86 platform was here also inferior until establishment of the Pentium CPU. PowerPC, MIPS and the alpha RISC CPUs were better. Concerning 64 bit extension: The developers for powerPC architecture thought far earlier about a 64 bit extension because the CPU actually originates from mainframes, also for the MIPS architecture the developers thought far earlier about the 64 bit extension, far before Intel x86 thought about. Also with the 16 to 32 bit development Intel was late. The 8086, 80186, 80286 are pure 16 bit CPUs whereas the 68000 had a 32 bit programming model internally already. 32 bit address register internally (32 bit logical address space, linear addressable) from that 24 bit externally usable. The 68 series had features, x86 had far later for instance: Internal Harward architecture protected (kernel) mode Branch prediction pipelining barrel shifter The 80386 was the first 32 bit CPU from the 80x86 series. I am familiar with the CPU history since 1984. Either at PC games or later at scientific use. Intel 80x86 CPUs were not performant enough until the establishment of Pentium..and has later suffered again from setback with the Pentium 4. People who made own music, gamer and scientists did go elsewhere. Music makers to Mac, scientists to MIPS CPUs, gamers to 68000. The performance gain / year since mid 80s to millennium was immense compared to today. It's sometimes not easy to spot a winner there, I have to admit You may check the sources of history. I am sure I recall correctly, though. The 'death' of native 16 bit has happened with the removal of NTVDM at the 64 bit CPUs. It has nothing to do with the OS. Emulating a full 8086 processor is possible, though. What I wanted to point out is that it will be the CPUs determining when 32 bit will be dead, not the OS. And people need to differentiate the processes / architecture /register. Intel has currently other jobs than to remove the 32 bit architecture, namely to fix their branch prediction flaws. Intel compared to their competitors was quite often second best only, though. Money talks.
NVIDIA discontinued support for 32-bit Operating Systems and is no longer releasing Game Ready drivers for any GPU architecture beginning with Release 396.
That makes sense to cancel 32 bit driver support sooner or later. Anyway they do release critical security related updates through January 2019. Another thing.... 32 bit applications do run on 32 bit AND 64 bit OS. This does not apply to drivers. One needs 64 bit drivers for 64 bit OS and 32 bit drivers for 32 bit OS. The ability to run 32 bit apps does not end by using 64 bit OS, means using 64 bit OS does not mean 'the death' of 32 bit.
It has been quite useful for us to have the architecture of x32. As mentioned, having x64 has the benefit of executing x32 programs. successes
PC gaming. Not arcades (that I've spent as many hours in as in school ). Not university computers that did not fit in a large room. Not consoles (had dozens of those). And not pseudo-computers. PC. As-in, IBM-PC. Affordable, personal computers, not much different than what we have these days. Arcades had better games for a while.. but you had to spend a fortune to get an arcade cabinet, more so on every game rom boards, and a hefty tech support bill for it. And that's hardly a "PC". You can't make your own games in Basic, the same way you can't on your tv/vcr/fridge/car service menu. PC games started with IBM PCs. Macs coexisted, but were.. not affordable. And not all games were ported from PC. As for Intel dominating the market via shady business or not, it's also part of history. AMD had it's moments too with 5x86, K6-II (played so much quake II on those), Athlon XP and Athlon 64. I actually dodged all those PIII and PIV Intel flops by going to AMD. Nothing else worth it on the PC market except for some overrated SiS and Cyrix processors, failing to replicate the Pentium performance in games, i.e. where it matters even now. Games are still the driving force behind technological advancement. You don't look like a gamer, and that's probably why we disagree on this subject. Either way, 32bit is on it's way to the Bin. Recycle Bin. In less than a decade. Why wouldn't it be, when GPUs have 12GB VRAM.. like WTAF?! Stop being poor, get 4GB+ RAM and Windows x64
Same! But that's about to change if you don't take these 64bytes back: Dangerous Dave? Commander Keen? Wolfenstein 3D? Doom? Heretic? Quake? (id ftw!) Alone in the Dark? Warcraft? Dune? Heroes of Might and Magic? With EGA/VGA monitors, 256 colors, PC speaker emulation and later sound cards? high color? true color? Riva? Voodoo? GeForce? Please name me just one game better than any on those, available in 8bit consoles/pseudo-pc/whatever in those times. SNK arcades and consoles don't count - those were ahead of times - still get frills on that neo-geo logo. Consoles have struggled to keep up with the PC, and ended up becoming an x86 PC themselves inside the console form-factor.
I bet they don't know themselves when...my guess is it's a matter of CPU not OS...and my guess is that there will be multi-arch a long long time....as long as there is 32-bit architecture the OS will run 32 bit apps as well.... The time when there will be 64-bit windows alone can be soon...but since it can run 32-bit it's no end.... ARM could ditch 32-bit sooner.....
Neither am I, it's pointless to even attempt that with an amiga fanboy turned grandpa But I do need to take a stand when I'm directed to reflect or research stuff that I lived trough. I played on arcades, amiga's, zx-spectrum's, (and dozens of clones in between), pc's. And I specifically quoted only proper PC games, skipping the era of awful ports from arcades, that btw sucked both on PC as 2nd hand ports, and on amiga's as 3rd hand ports with nothing but slightly tweaked sprites and marginally better sound vs. the PC version (granted, some were 2nd hand ports on amiga's first, and 3rd hand ports on PC). Why praise any of them at that time when there was not even a contest with Arcades. Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Samurai Shodown, Double Dragon, Fatal Fury, Terminator 2 and so many more immortal games that eventually got ported, poorly (that's the thing, you can't port the cabinet, the controls, the hardware, the display, the speed, the vibe). Anyway, the PC Gaming Master Race started in '92 with Wolfenstein 3D. FYI And 32bit is still going to die in less than 10 years, just like your beloved Amiga