Microsoft is to phase out 32bit versions of its Windows server operating system, the company revealed today. The first release of Longhorn, the server version of next-generation Windows  Vista, will support both 32bit and 64 bit hardware. But Release 2 of Longhorn, expected to launch in 2009, will be 64bit only, according to Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's enterprise management group.
He told developers at the company's it IT Forum in Barcelona that 64 bit code runs 'most'  32bit applications, often as much as l0 percent faster. He admitted that companies would have to replace 32bit hardware to run the new version but he said most were already switching to 64bit machines, even if they were running 32bit software.
'When you buy a server today it is going to be 64 bit,' he said.' The only exception is with really low end machines which are designed for the desktop but used us servers."
He stressed that speed and an extended address space were not the only advantages of 64 bit. A new kernel-level feature caIIed Patchman will protect against buffer-outflow attacks. 'This wouldhave been very hard to implement in 32 bit. But we had to rewrite the kernel in 64 t anyway."
Exchange Server 12, Windows Compute. cluster, and the small business version of Longhorn will also be exclusively 64 bit, Muglia said.