Parametric Technology says that its Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire CAD software is now available for Windows XP-64 running on HP's Itanium workstation computer running Intel's Itanium2 CPU.
As the FAQ notes, 64-bit CPUs access up to 18 billion gigabytes of RAM (makes my 1GB desktop computer seem wimpy). The benefit is Pro/E's ability to handle larger assemblies and models. The drawback is a performance degrade of between 5% and 20% compared to the 32-bit version.
Running in 64 bits are:
* All design and manufacturing modules of Pro/ENGINEER.
* Embedded applications, like ModelCHECK and Pro/MECHANICA.
* Pro/INTRALINK 3.4 client is due soon.
The 64-bit version was first available for UNIX True64 running on the Alpha CPU (supported only for Pro/E Release 2001, however), as well as Sun and HP platforms. For SGI UNIX computers, the 64-bit version of Wildfire is the only available, 32-bit. PTC says they will continue to support 32-bit for as long as there is reasonable demand. Sounds like the DOS-to-Windows transition of a decade ago.
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