Music, Movie Apps Ready for 64-Bit Athlon

LAS VEGAS -- Advanced Micro Devices President and Chief Executive Officer Hector Ruiz used his Tuesday keynote address at Comdex here to demonstrate what 64-bit technology can accomplish for both businesses and consumers, as he challenged the tech industry to stop delivering technology for technology's sake.

Several companies discussed their commitment to current and future 64-bit technologies using Athlon processors, including Gibson Guitar, Epic Games, Northeast Utilities, and China Basic Education Software.

Demos Galore

IBM's DB2 database was demonstrated running on the forthcoming Opteron processor. It took IBM two days to port DB2 to the Opteron technology, which will help large DB2 data warehouse users perform faster queries, said Pat Selinger, an IBM fellow, during the presentation.

The IBM demonstration drew the interest of one attendee. "We have DB2 running on IBM mainframes that I'd love to port (to the Opteron's x86-64 instruction set)," said Liz Edgington, IT manager for Orange County, California. "I hadn't really considered AMD before, but it's something to think about," she said.

Ruiz's speech also featured demos of workstations and PCs using the desktop version of the 64-bit Hammer technology, which is now called Athlon 64, Ruiz said. JAK Films, the production company founded by Star Wars creator George Lucas, demonstrated how 64-bit technology improves previsualization techniques, and NVidia used the newly christened Athlon 64 and its new GeForce FX graphics chip to render a video of a highly detailed shapely sprite.

"I was skeptical when I came in: Why talk about 64-bit? But I was amazed by the NVidia rendering; that's great stuff," said attendee J.C. Dorng, who works at Silicon Valley start-up Ascendlink. "Suddenly you see the difference technology makes," he said.

Targeting Tech

"Information technology is no longer a distinct business; it is becoming the DNA of many industries," Ruiz said. This gives new technologies an "enormous opportunity to influence industries," he said.

AMD will deploy technology with a customer focus, delivering new technology only if customers want it, Ruiz said. As transistors grow more numerous and inexpensive, they will find their way into many devices, but AMD wants to make sure the application fulfills a need, he said.

A number of companies have announced their support for AMD's forthcoming 64-bit processors. Covalent Technologies and Red Hat announced Monday they will offer a version of the popular and free Apache Web server software for the Opteron processors. Apache is based on Linux and runs on more than half of the world's Web servers, AMD said.

Also, several hardware vendors are developing tools to interconnect supercomputers powered by the Opteron processor. Enterprise management software from Altiris, Novell, and PowerQuest will support the Opteron, AMD said.

Theme Song

Ruiz's speech ended with Ruiz and Gibson Guitar Chair and Chief Executive Officer Henry Juskiewicz awkwardly strumming Gibson Les Paul guitars backed by a full band recorded and played through an AMD Athlon 64 workstation. The two executives pantomimed the chords to Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," rebranded as "AMD's Knockin' on 64."

The highlight was saved for last, with former Guns N' Roses lead guitarist Slash launching into a real guitar solo over the recording, amid a rock concert-style light show and an AMD video presentation.