SUNNYVALE, Calif.--A new research study commissioned by AMD (NYSE:AMD) and conducted by Gartner Custom Research, a division of Gartner, Inc., concludes that as enterprises migrate to 64-bit computing, having a platform that supports both 32-bit and 64-bit applications will be critical to their migration strategy(a).

Gartner Custom Research conducted both qualitative and quantitative interviews with IT managers from government, healthcare, financial, and other enterprises of all sizes who were key decision-makers regarding their respective company's computing platforms. Respondents were surveyed on their plans on migrating from 32-bit to 64-bit computing, their perceptions of 64-bit computing and what applications will drive their adoption of it.

With regard to the benefits of 64-bit computing, the respondents said the primary benefit of 64-bit computing is increased performance through the ability to access more memory. Respondents see 64-bit computing as enabling faster queries and processing for large database applications as well as facilitating faster financial transactions. Most respondents agreed that 64-bit migration will start with large, core database servers and transaction-based applications.

More than 80 percent of the respondents stated that the ability to run both 32-bit and 64-bit applications while migrating to 64-bit is somewhat or extremely important. More than 50 percent of the respondents said that migration cannot occur without 32- and 64-bit capability. Not having backward compatibility to 32-bit was seen as a definitive barrier to 64-bit computing by many of the respondents.

"The results of Gartner's survey confirm what we continue to hear from our customers -- they need an industry-standard 64-bit solution that provides protection for their substantial investment in 32-bit infrastructure," said Marty Seyer, vice president and general manager of AMD's Microprocessor Business Unit. "Migration to 64-bit will happen at the customer's own pace, which is why the customer-centric AMD Opteron(tm) processor gives enterprises leading-edge 32-bit performance for their existing applications and the 64-bit computing power to meet their growing database and business process application needs."

"The Microsoft(R) WOW64 (Windows(R) on Windows) subsystem will allow most 32-bit applications to launch seamlessly on 64-bit Windows," said Brian Marr, Windows product manager. "WOW64 is designed to provide interoperability and great performance on AMD64 processors across the 32/64-bit boundaries. As customers migrate to 64-bit Windows XP and Windows Server, they will have a code base that will support both 32- and 64-bit applications."

(a) Gartner Custom Research survey results may differ from the published research position of Gartner Inc.