Print - As Win64 Nears, Are 16-Bit and 32-Bit Applications Out?

We all know that Intel is working on 64-bit processors, Alpha processors already work with 64-bit applications, and the next generation of applications will work with Windows 64. But what will happen to all the 16-bit and 32-bit applications? We’ll have thousands of software vendors trying to sell us a new wave of Windows-based applications, encouraging us to move into the 64-bit age. Pretty soon, we'll have Win64 versions of Microsoft Office, WordPerfect, QuickTime, and so on. The question is simple: Will end users and enterprises have to upgrade every Windows 32 application to Win64?

We're concerned about Y2K, but are we ready to move into the world of Win64? When users prepare for the year 3000, they'll have to look back to see how their predecessors dealt with Y2K. Now that we're at the dawn of the 64-bit age, we'll also have to look back to see what happened when users moved from 16-bit to 32-bit applications.

I've programmed all my life for the Windows platform, and I still have 16-bit Windows applications that are very useful. I don’t have to lose time rewriting my applications for Win32, because they don't need to use programming features such as multiple threads. Instead, I can spend time working on other projects. When Win32 appeared, everyone started rewriting applications, and many people didn’t know why they were updating all their code—maybe it was the fashion at the time. Unfortunately, I've seen some 32-bit applications with worse performance than 16-bit applications.

Windows NT 4.0 lets you execute 16-bit applications within their own memory address space (unfortunately, I haven't seen this option in the Windows 2000—Win2K—beta). If most of your 16-bit applications do a good job, you'll just have to upgrade those that really need the 32-bit address space and associated 32-bit features (e.g., multithreading, separate address space). Then, if you don’t need 32-bit code, why would you need 64-bit code?

I think Win64 and the 64-bit processors will be a great step forward in the industry. But the OS and the processor architecture are just one part of the pie—the other major component is the applications. A 64-bit OS will boast big performance gains, but that doesn't mean we should unnecessarily rewrite applications. Before you invest in the future, consider whether you really need to upgrade your code—you might be able to save time, money, and human resources that you can use for other and more productive tasks.

—Luis Hernández Schäfer
lehs@entelchile.net

"When users prepare for the year 3000, they'll have to look back to see how their predecessors dealt with Y2K. " ..Huh? Are we to assume that after the year 2000 passes programmers will revert back to only using 2 digit dates, thereby ensuring that a year 3000 problem will exist? By that logic, we will have a year 2010 problem because of all the programmers who, in their great wisdom, decided to save space and only store single-digit dates. It only illustrates the fact that though computers are generally y2k compliant, people are not.

I have been running 16-bit applications intensively on W2K beta 3; those that are well behaved run better than ever. I'm not aware of any significant change in 16-bit support from NT4 to beta3. I would continue running the beta for personal use if it were to turn out that this support is missing from the W2K release. I have been running AOL4 (Windows 3.1 version); that requires the MSNLS.DLL which may be found on the Norwegian missingdll site. WordPerfect 5.1 does an excellent job on W2K, and I work on the same files using WordPerfect 8 in linux. I have been trying AOL beta releases on W2K; so far, none are functional. They appear to be on track with a switch to DUN for AOL5; why not allow this to run in NT?

16 bit and 32 bit apps might work fine under WIN2K but thats a lot different from a 64 bit environment. Having converted an environment from 32 bit VMS to 64 bit VMS the performance hit on the alpha processor for data and instructions not aligned on a 64 bit boundary is enormous! Maybe IA-64 won't suffer this way but I wouldn't be banking on it. This really is a hardware driven issue, sure the O/S has something do do with it but you won't see the performance gains unless you double your memory and relink the applications at least. So 16 and 32bit apps will probably run, but not much better than on a pentium, if thats good enough, fine, but most high end apps will change pretty quick.