At the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in Seattle, Bill Gates officially inaugurated the era of 64 bit computing by announcing Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and three versions of Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition.

Yes, other 64 bit operating systems based on Linux/Unix platforms have been available for a long time, but at the end of the day, Windows is what most of us use on a daily basis.

So what will 64 bit computing offer? On the one hand, it exceeds the 4 GB limit of main memory that 32 bit architectures offer. On the other hand, larger 64 bit chunks of data can be processed at a time, which enables substantial performance gains with optimized 64 bit software.

Gates made unmistakably clear that Windows x64 editions will be able to both run fast 64 bit applications and traditional 32 bit software, without slowing down the latter. The critical point at crossing over to 64 bits is the availability of device drivers, which Gates addressed during his keynote with 64 bit solution demos, including Lightwave 3D64 and SQL Server 2005 on Windows Server 2003 x64. Gates also pointed out that large parts of Microsoft's infrastructure have already been converted to x64.

In the future, we will inevitably spend a lot of time analyzing what 64 bit Windows performance is all about. If you come across 64 bit applications you consider interesting, please let us know - feedback is highly appreciated. Microsoft itself will update SQL Server, Visual Studio and HostIntegration Server this year and BizTalk and Commerce Servers next year.

Lastly, the other topic we were eagerly waiting for is Windows Longhorn, which will be the successor of today's Windows XP and 2003 Server in the second half of next year. Bill Gates referred to it as the next-generation platform, as it will incorporate some substantial enhancements to Windows that were outlined during the presentation, mostly about security, reliability and data organization. From the hardware perspective, Longhorn will support 3D graphics hardware since information visualization is becoming a major focus, too. Features like instant-on support, smart caching as well as support for hybrid hard drives are among Longhorn's features, Microsoft says.