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Should my program support IA64, or should it only support x64?
I haven't been able to easily find IA64 computers myself. Is IA64 dead?
MS seems to have a wide support for IA64, but it took me a long time to be able to find an IA64, and I had to end up getting it on eBay.
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IA64 was intended for high-end server applications while x64 was initially intended for desktops but were scaled up. IA64 systems are not able to run old x86 applications while most x64 systems are. IA64 is very slow to adopt new computer technologies while x64 is very fast.
The CPU type should be in the environment variable %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE% , and echo %PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE% in the command prompt should give you AMD64 on a x86-64 processor. msinfo32.exe should also have a "System Type" field, which says x64-based PC for me on a x86-64 processor.
x64 is a 64 bit architecture, AArch64 is a 64 bit architecture; IA64 is a 64 bit architecture; ppc64 is a 64 bit architecture; all of these have very little in common one with each other.
The IA-64 architecture will be a fully 64-bit architecture, though it will retain backward compatibility with older 32-bit architectures (such as the P6 architecture) and x86 architectures. The proposed improvements will come from three major design elements: EPIC, branch predication and control speculation.
What kind of software do you develop? If it's not a data center type of application or a high-end number crunching app, I'd be surprised if there were any demand for an ia64 version. And even then, I'd think it would be a situation where if you have to ask if you should support it, you probably don't need to.
A couple things off the top of my head that might hamper an ia64 port:
Of course, I don't work for Gartner or IDC or anyone who does market analysis, so you should take what I say here with whatever skepticism you have lying around.
Have any customers or potential customers inquired?
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