Microsoft Posts Windows Server Beta For AMD64 Architecture

Microsoft also plans to offer a standard edition of the operating system for Intel's 64-bit Itanium processor, but that beta is not yet available, a spokeswoman said.

At the official Windows 2003 launch in April, the company made available beta versions of Enterprise and Datacenter editions of the network operating system for Intel's Itanium chip.

The first bits of the AMD64 edition go live online Wednesday for MSDN subscribers, with general availability to follow, Microsoft said.

Microsoft has said its operating system will support both 64-bit platforms, but it remains unclear to many whether it will extend AMD64 support beyond that to the Microsoft server applications. One SQL Server product manager said AMD64 support will be added to the database, which is already available in an Intel 64-bit version. But whether the e-business server lineup will follow suit is unclear.

Asked to detail more plans for Opteron, AMD's 64-bit server chip, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently told CRN that he was "not sure on server applications but ... there is OEM interest in the Opteron chip, there will be other operating systems on Opteron, so our operating systems will work on Opteron. There's a lot of value in 64-bit versions of today's popular architectures so we're going to support that."

Some observers also wonder whether Microsoft plans to support the AMD64 architecture beyond a version 1 release of its operating system.