Users will have to balance their IT security requirements with potential Java and .net performance problems if they are to take advantage of the features being introduced in Windows XP Service Pack 2. The highest level of security offered through SP2 will require the use of "no execution" (NX) technology, which is currently only available on machines equipped with AMD's Athlon an Opteron 64-bit chips. Gartner research fellow Martin Reynolds said, "Buffer overflow will be a lot harder to exploit under SP2." But he pointed out that some applications might not be compatible with NX. "Some code may deliberately execute from the data area - for example, just-in-time compilers for Java - and require the NX feature to be disabled," he said. Intel said its next Pentium 4 chip, Prescott, would not support NX.