Slashdot Mirror
Windows XP 64-Bit Customer Preview Program
MBCook writes "I just notice that Microsoft has a new Windows XP 64-Bit Customer Preview Program starting today (February 3rd). If you have a AMD Opteron or Athlon64, you can go to the download page to get your copy. It's a pre-release copy that will expire in 360 days (which probably means the final will be out by then). Now Intel just changed their 64-bit plans, and all of a sudden this appears. Speculate away!"
I wonder if a 64 bit OS will make any performance difference for the average desktop user. Since its not like any normal people have more than a gig of ram anyways. Is it possible that it could even slow down 32 bit apps?
If Intel can't stay compatible with AMD's lineup they could end up behind. That would certainly be a first for Intel.
Will the AMD64 build include Windows Media Player? It was left out of the IA64 version due to what I can only assume are 64-bit cleanliness issues with the DirectShow API and WMP code. I can only assume that an AMD64 build would allow 32-bit builds of DirectShow and WMP which execute through the WoW abstraction layer.
I still recall reading the article in Wired magazine a few months back. A company approached them with an offer to provide them perfect diamond wafers (produced at less then $5/wafer) and Intel did not take the offer because they have not gotten their full investment back on the silicon. So given that they refused to have an easy method of increasing their processor spead by a very big number, it is not surprising that they still haven't gotten 64 bit over AMD... Shame, Intel used to be the best. -A
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
and the Opteron can hold it one register. Just prefix the instruction with the OTHER size prefix byte. (for those who don't already know, most intel instructions if operating on a 16-bit short require a prefix byte. On the Opteron, you use a different prefix to get 64-bit ints and the extended regs)
There are plenty of places where it makes sense to use 64-bit regs, especially in the kernel when involving counters, timers, GIDs, and such.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I personally think that Windows XP Home/Professional for the AMD x86-64 CPU architecture is closer to release than people think.
They're probably right now redoing much of the OS code so it does take full advantage of x86-64 registers, and is waiting for other Microsoft departments to complete their work so an improved version of Internet Explorer 6.01 (Service Pack 2?) and all the Windows XP Service Pack 2 improvements are incorporated into the final version. Don't be surprised that when Windows XP SP2 ships some time this summer we'll see both 32-bit and the x86-64 64-bit version come out at the same time.
You might be correct, but honestly both of us are just speculating. To be honest, I think neither Linux nor Windows can match the number of Solaris 64-bit installations there are in the world. But again, it would be interesting to see some data on the matter. My point was only that one can't call Linux "a much more mature platform," as the previous poster did.
I do know that HP and one or two others are shipping Itanium2 servers full-steam at the moment, despite Intel's recent 64-bit malaise. It's almost a given that all of those will be running 64-bit Windows. I've seen a demo of a HP 64-bit workstation running 64-bit Windows, and it was really nice. It even had accelerated video drivers, but I don't know what video hardware.
This is absolutely correct. If you have source code, you can (usually) just recompile for 64-bit user-mode applications. Otherwise you wait for an ISV to produce a binary for you. But Linux64 is in the same boat with Windows64 as far as drivers go. Arguably worse, since manufacturers have been (until now) unwilling to make their drivers open source and generally produce Linux drivers only after Windows drivers are already complete. And as we all know, the KEY to PC users' hearts is seamless hardware support!
I don't understand.
In the Top 5 Reasons to move to Windows XP 64 page it says things like, "Windows XP 64-Bit Edition has been optimized specifically for the Intel Itanium processor" and many other similar comments. It mentions nothing about any Athlon 64bit processors. Yet on the download page it says it only supports the Athlon 64 and Opteron.
Why the massive discrepancy? If the whole thing is optimised for the Itanium, then why isn't the Itanium even supported by the demo version?!
What`s more, 64bit windows is something new, so your far more likely to encounter non 64bit clean code in windows apps, Contrast this to unix apps.. where 64bit systems have been available for years and so a majority of programs can already compile cleanly on a 64bit platform.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
However a lot of linux drivers are 64bit clean, and have long worked on 64bit Alpha, PPC and Sparc machines running Linux.. Many PCI nic and scsidrivers for instance work flawlessly across different architectures including 64bit ones.
I myself have an Alphastation with a number of pci cards using drivers intended for 32bit x86 machines, which work perfectly well.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I've never been blinded by the sun glinting off a pile of sugar, but I sure have when it glinted off the bumper of my '84 Buick tank.
;)
Go to White Sands, NM
It's a gypsum desert, purely white (ok, ok. It's calcium sulfate, so it's not as bright as titanium dioxide, but there are no titanium dioxide deserts I am aware of).
When I was there in summer (115 F/46C in the non existant shadows!) I had to actually hold my hand below my eyes to see anything, and usual sunglasses wouldn't have helped because they don't shadow the eyes from light coming in from below.
The main difference between white and mirror is that the mirror reflects the sunlight beam in a single direction, and if the mirror has an optical albedo of 0,9 (90% of the visual light gets reflected), you look at 90% of the full sunlight if the reflection of the sunlight hits your eye (which is quite bright), but you get barely anything at other angles (just the reflection of the general brightness of the surroundings).
A white surface doesn't necessarily keep the light beam parallel, so you see a bright surface from a very large angle. A white surface with an optical albedo of 0,99 (only 1% of the visual light gets sucked in and turned into infrared) can be calculated as a new light source, which emits nearly all of the incoming light according to its own characteristics. That means that the light you receive from it depends on the angle you look at it and the distance you have from it. But because the white surface emits the light in different directions, you will never get the full intensity of 99% at a single point, and the intensity decreases further with the square of the distance (if you double your distance to the surface you get a quarter of the intensity).
So even if a white surface may be 10 times more effective as a mirror (with 1% light loss in reflection vs. 10% light loss in reflection), from a certain point the mirror will look brighter: If you stand directly in the reflected light beam.
(Those different properties of reemitting received light are wellknown to the computer graphic specialists, because both effects they get handled differently: For mostly reflecting surfaces like mirrors and polished things ray tracing is a quite good model to calculate the light impression, for matte surfaces like stones, wood and walls radiosity yields better results.)
(PS: Those albedo numbers are made up, but they shouldn't be far away from reality).