Only 'x86' parts, if you look at other architectures (for instance 68k) then the dates will be quite different.
The interesting part about that list is that if the clock frequencies had continue to increase I'm fairly sure that the 32 bit model would have been taken a lot further up before going for 64 bits.
So it seems as though the widening of the datapath is to some extent used to offset the limit on CPU frequency.
You need it to take advantage of 4GB+ of memory really - so that's most systems you see in shops already. 64bit took off in Enterprise systems (IBM/Sun/SGI etc.) where it was common to have 4GB+ of memory years ago. The Desktop is next. 64bit will come to mobile/embedded when they have 4GB+ of memory.
The Windows and Mac OS ecosystems (particularly drivers) need to catch up with 64bit support, currently this is still spotty which is inhibiting adoption. Linux support driver support for 64bit is excellent due to most drivers being open source - but most people are not using Linux.
4004 1971, 4 bits, 740 Khz
8080 1974, 8 bits, 2 MHz
8086 1978, 16 bits, 5 MHz
80386 1985, 32 bits, 12 MHz
AMDK8 2003, 64 bits, 1 GHz
Only 'x86' parts, if you look at other architectures (for instance 68k) then the dates will be quite different.
The interesting part about that list is that if the clock frequencies had continue to increase I'm fairly sure that the 32 bit model would have been taken a lot further up before going for 64 bits.
So it seems as though the widening of the datapath is to some extent used to offset the limit on CPU frequency.
64bit hasn't really become common place despite being around for years.
It's a trade off between performance and storage, and I think we'll probably settle on 32bit for the next 10 years in consumer devices anyway.
Just my 2c
You need it to take advantage of 4GB+ of memory really - so that's most systems you see in shops already. 64bit took off in Enterprise systems (IBM/Sun/SGI etc.) where it was common to have 4GB+ of memory years ago. The Desktop is next. 64bit will come to mobile/embedded when they have 4GB+ of memory.
The Windows and Mac OS ecosystems (particularly drivers) need to catch up with 64bit support, currently this is still spotty which is inhibiting adoption. Linux support driver support for 64bit is excellent due to most drivers being open source - but most people are not using Linux.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IA-64 came out in 2001, although it was something of a huge failure.
The Itanium instruction set didn't exactly maintain backwards compatibility with the x86 instruction set.
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