Novell's Merced Modesto could be half way 64 bit house

NetWare 5.0 is to be ported to the Merced platform, it emerged today. At last week's Intel Developer Forum in Palm Springs, California, Rumi Zahir, chief architect of the Merced platform, said that Novell Modesto was supporting the Merced platform. Netfire is a virtual Java machine that will sit on top of the Intel IA-64 platform. A Novell spokesman said that Modesto is the Merced platform for NetWare. But he refused to say whether it would use the abilities of the simulation platform, a software halfway house, to run Netware on Merced. Zahir said last week that the majority of programs did not need to be rewritten specifically for a 64-bit chip. He said that the 32-bit method of porting would mean that Merced -- now officially due in the second half of the year 2000 -- would suffice for most. But Zahir refused to be drawn on whether operating systems, and NetWare could be considered one such, would need to be ported. ®