“Advanced Micro Devices and Apple Computer will likely tout that they can deliver 64-bit computing to desktops this year, but Intel is in no hurry.”

“Two of the company’s top researchers said that a lack of applications, existing circumstances in the memory market, and the inherent challenges in getting the industry and consumers to migrate to new chips will likely keep Intel from coming out with a 64-bit chip–similar to those found in high-end servers and workstations–for PCs for years.”

“‘It could be the end of the decade’ before mainstream desktops need more than 4GB of memory, one of the chief reasons to move to 64-bit chips, Justin Rattner, a senior fellow at Intel, said during an interview at the Intel Developer Forum taking place in San Jose, Calif., this week.”

“Rattner’s comments echoed statements from Intel President Paul Otellini, who said in an interview last year that Intel may not be compelled to produce a 64-bit desktop chip until 2008 or even 2009,” reports ZDNet. Full story here.

MacDailyNews take: It’ll be interesting to see the marketing if it actually does end up that Apple has 64-bit Power Macs vs. 32-bit Intel Wintel boxes. AMD is the wildcard, as are the CPU choices of the Wintel box assemblers such as Dell, HP, and Gateway (if they’re still in business).