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Will Vanderpool Make Linux More Popular?
Digitaldonkey writes "New Scientist is reporting that Intel's forthcoming multi-core processor architecture, codenamed "Vanderpool", could undermine Microsoft's dominance by letting other operating systems run simultaneously more easily. From the article: 'The chip will allow future machines to run, say, Windows XP together with Linux or the Apple operating system as easily as today's Windows computers run Word and Internet Explorer simultaneously.'"
Sounds great, but "..Windows XP together with Linux or the Apple operating system" -- I didn't know that Apple would be releasing MacOS for other architectures. And I'm assuming it's not going to incorporate the PPC archtype.
Sounds similar to what IBM does with the AS/400 - allowing hardware subsystems to run different operating systems.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
So we're looking at a chip that may be a reality in 2008-2009, but since New Scientist doesn't provide any hard info on the chip except for the funky code name, this is all very up in the air. Virtualisation software works pretty good today anyway. You can easily try out any flavour of Linux or BSD on your WinXP computer (or vice cersa) using VMWare today -- without having to "give up" Windows (or Linux).
since when does internet explorer and word run easily together?
This doesn't mean that we will see Linux start generating Blue Screens Of Death does it?
There are already ways to run Linux on a windows machine, and visa versa.. (VMware comes to mind)
And with todays already beefy processors, it runs pretty good, albeit not perfectly..
It seems this would only impact the share of people who are already using VMware to do this sort of thing..
Who knows
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
Seems like another case of technology history repeating itself. Still, the idea is fantastic although i don't see how a company like microsoft in the article can really benifit from it.
It may make Windows more popular, too. I've come across a bunch of people who want to play Windows-only games, but don't want to go through the hassle of going into Windows whenever they want to play something. If all you had to do was instantly switch over, it wouldn't be a big deal and I'm sure a lot more people would do it.
Anyways, the only way I can see the ability to run Windows and Linux simultaneously actually making Linux significantly more popular is in the workplace where the admins want to switch everybody over to Linux, but there's that one critical app that only runs on Windows...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
One more to add to the list:
1) hidden 64bit abilities
2) 5-7 ghz processor
3) multicore cpu
All this to make people delay their purchase of an athlon64?
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VMWare uses a software redirection/emulation. The new chip would act (essentialy) like two separate CPUs.
The problem would be in splitting up and/or sharing resources, I think. There would have to be some sort of delays for this solution, similar to the ones you might see in VMWare. For example, you can't read from two different sections of memory (or hard drive) at the same time. There would need ot be some sort of pre-empting and priorities assigned. VMWare's solution uses code in RAM. Intel apparently thinks the CPU is a good place to do this...
This could really cut out the relevance of application support behind an OS. Any application not supported by your current OS could be built in with the app and booted separately almost like a Knoppix CD.
Thinking particularly of games and multimedia, this could really shake things up.
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
Does anyone think their mother or father would switch because of what this article discusses?
Conversely, is this going to get businesses to try a new OS? No. If a business wants to try a new OS, in general, they can afford a machine dedicated to the new OS to try it out.
Certain properties of the x86 architecture make it a hard chip to "virtualize" (sort of partition the processor into two virtual processors), which is what VMWare does. Chips can be designed specifically to be easily virtualizable, making applications like VMWare almost trivial to code while being much, much faster. If Intel does somehow retrofit virtualization capabilities onto a x86 chip, it could be a big boon for Linux. An open-source VMWare clone could be written quite easily, and it would run Windows almost as fast as it would run natively.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I believe that this architecture may do the same for virtualization and make it truly reasonable to run real-time apps under multiple OSs without the hickups of today. I could then theoretically run Apache/POP3/DNS on the very same box as Active Directory/SQL Server/.Net without many problems - great for a small test environment. Eventually, the hardware might become small/portable and you could start to think of hand-held devices with multiple operating systems or functionalities. The manufacturing and testing industries would love such a device.
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this may be the reason for earlier story about MS wanting to control the BIOS too. So now the competition is between MS and Intel. This looks an interesting fight as both are titans and closely interdependent. Having killed other CPUs by promising a lot and delivering little, MS has put itself in a tight position. It can't fight with intel in the same way it fought with Digital. This is one of the reasons, why MS won't release 64 bit OS until intel gives go ahead (according to some newsgroup articles, people had seen 64-bit windows demo in 1997).
If bios is under MS control, and if MS OS is pre-installed, what are the chances that it will allow people to install other OS? Today, most pre-installed XP machine create single partition covering the entier the disk (many people think this is dangerous specially if the partition goes bad, you could loose all data). This effectively prevents installing linux atleast to non-hackers.
Still you can't discount Intel. Although MS can cotrol many PC manufacturers, most MB manufacturers will side with Intel and leave BIOS out of MS reach to be monopolized.
MS can play some dirty tricks too. If MS-OS detects that you are running some other OS too, then it can create some random fault in MS-OS and crash it which may give user the feeling that the other OS caused it. Anyone old enough to remember DR-DOS being incompatible with Windows warning?
We're doomed.
Intel processors have supported the TSS (Task State Segment) for years. This is an architectural feature that enables true task switching in the processor. No OS or other software I'm aware of has ever used this feature of the architecture. The stated reason why it's not used in Windows is "performance". I can see why that would have been a concern 4 or 5 years ago, but it's not very well quantified. I have no idea at all if Linux makes use of the TSS in a way that differs from Windows.
Stop posting this irrelevant link.
Darwin is a Mach based unix, on top of which one can run X Windows. It is *not* Mac OS X. Specifically, The Aqua user interface (which all native Mac OS X apps use), the Carbon APIs (which legacy Mac apps, like Internet Explorer, and Photoshop use), and Cocoa, (which newer Apps such as Mail and Safari use), are *not* open source.
Aqua, Carbon, and Cocoa are *not* part of Darwin. So, no, you cannot run Mac OS X just because there is an x86 version of Darwin. You can run yet another *nix on x86 with Darwin, but you cannot run Mac OS X.
Are people really this misinformed? How did parent get modded up?
Perhaps we are going to be able to go back to multi-user computers. This would actually be a real benefit for many people. An AS/400 for the home, replacing all the boxes with a single central box again. Thin clients with wireless networking around the place. If a virus hits OS Instance 1, bring it down and fix it in the background while work is transferred to OS Instance 2. One user can crash and burn without anyone else knowing or caring. Load sharing means that the heavy and light users can peacefully coexist. And small businesses are going to love it. Life was easier in the 80s when they had a single Unix box and half a dozen dumb terminals. Life is going to be easier again when there's a single big reliable box with all the external connections and massive storage, and a few screens and keyboards around the place. No fun for case modders, but then for those of us who believe computing should be as ubiquitous as plumbing, and as unobtrusive, case modding is deeply sad.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
This will have interesting implications with Microsofts licensing mechanisms. All the virutal machines *should* look the same, and Microsoft shouldn't really care if I run multiple copies of their workstation version on the same desktop. That way, I can clone the OS, apply the latest patches, see if they work without blue screening the system, and then put that system into "production". Just like how they use VM on mainframes.
So why did everyone accept a GUI from Windows but not a Mac? Is it because all the IBM PC users were morons that didn't see a better GUI was available? No. It's because something superior to Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect and Word weren't available on the Mac at launch, and apps just as good didn't appear until much later. The graphical arts folks appreciated Macs, but the general public had no "killer app" to make it worth the switch.
No matter how easy (or hard) an OS is, it takes apps to make it a success.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Disclaimer: I work for Intel (in an area having nothing whatsoever to do with Vanderpool), but the comments here are my own personal opinion. That said...
y notespeakers.htm#tuesday
I saw a demo of Vanderpool at Intel Developer Forum last month. In the demo, the system with a single processor was simultaneously running some version of Windows playing a media clip (a Simpsons episode) while at the same time on another monitor, another copy of Windows was running and was rebooted in order to update a device driver. The video clip played on.
My take on this (having never heard of it before I saw the IDF demo) was some sort of hardware-assisted VM. It is definitely nothing to do with multicore, as another Intel compatriot noted here.
You can read the transcript of Paul Otellini's Keynote where he presented Vanderpool at http://www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2003/conf_info/ke
I don't know if there were specific presentations on Vanderpool Technology at IDF - if there were, you'll be able to find them at http://www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2003/index.htm after November 2.
Quickly googled up a link from eWeek:
... providing Apple releases/creates its rumored-but-horribly-unlikely (imo) x86 build of OS X. ... Darwin, which is an OS, just not a very popular one and not much of story. Though AbiWord does run fairly well there with X11 installed. :^)
As Apple Computer Inc. draws up its game plan for the CPUs that will power its future generations of Mac hardware, the company is holding an ace in the hole: a feature-complete version of Mac OS X running atop the x86 architecture.
There have been rumors of the move to x86 for a while. I'm not sure if I buy them -- that's a ton of QA overhead for a potential move down the line, and hopefully the G5 negates any reason for them to move. Not to mention if Apple swapped processors, all the AltiVec-optimized code would be worth creee-ap without having multiple processor *types* in each new, partially x86 powered Mac. And any way you cut it, Apple would still, I'd assume, stick some hardware dongle in there to do what Open Firmware does now: stop cheap generic hardware (or expensive hardware when you talk Pegasos) from running OS X easily. Apple is a hardware company too, you know. Solutions, not just software, etc.
But the point of the article stands, even if the author was overhyping. Anil (the author) really has two outs:
Due for launch within five years, the chip will allow future machines to run, say, Windows XP together with Linux or the Apple operating system...
1.)
2.)
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.