Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft To Dump 32-Bit After Vista
SlinkySausage writes "Microsoft has used its annual hardware engineering conference to announce that Windows Vista and Server 2008 will be the last versions of Windows capable of booting on 32-bit CPUs such as Intel Pentium 4 and Core Duo. AMD, which introduced 64-bit CPUs early — much to the derision of Intel, which said there was no use for them at the time — must be delighted with Microsoft's decision. Owners of first-generation Intel Macs that used (32-bit only) Core Duo CPUs may not be so happy knowing that Vista will be the last Windows they will be able to run."
....I assure you, I'll be alright.
Does this mean that MS are going to inflict another operating system on us in the near future?
made today will be able to run the Microsoft replacement for Vista. Why worry?
Wasn't all the talk during vista's development that it would be the last operating system they'd make?
I know that was taken back a while ago. Just saying.
"Gharbad no Hurt!" -Gharbad
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The Real Motivation:
Buh-Bye Flash, hello Starlight! (or whatever it's called)
Linux, *BSP, etc, etc, are happy to support 32-Bit/64-Bit at the same time. I tried out the 64-Bit version of Windows Vista in VMWare (which can run 64-Bit Vista on top of 32-Bit Vista) and the only "benefit" I got was that my old 16-Bit apps stopped running. (Got several great 16-Bit games, and a 16-Bit dictionary.) What can the newfangled 64-Bit future Windows do that won't be feasible with a 32-Bit version lurking around?
As a programmer I've been waiting for this. I was actually disappointed that Vista would support 32-bit CPUs, but I guess there was no way around that, given how common 32-bit x86s still are. Having one architecture to support will make things much easier, as well as get people to actually update their legacy code. Now if MS could get them to actually fix all the problems due to generally crappy code (like requiring admin)...
You have tried to support your argument with faulty reasoning! Go directly to jail; do not pass Go, do not collect $200!
Microsoft themselves still don't support 64-bit yet. I installed the 64-bit version of SQL Server 2005 only to find it doesn't support 64-bit for SQL Mail and SSIS - you have to run the 32-bit versions of them under WoW64. Someone else has already mentioned drivers. If Microsoft can't or won't support their own software under 64 bit environments, they are going to have a heck of a time convincing developers to push everything over.
I fear there will be a loooooooong transition time - just as well they gave everyone an early warning.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
when you consider that it took many more years for Vista than was planned; the next Windows release ought to come about retirement age for most of us.
That and as Microsoft seems to feel that your next PC will be a cell/mobile phone, I'm waiting for the advent of the 64-bit mobile phone processor. Imagine its 128-bit predecessor. You'll be able to address every bit in the known universe with the memory map on *that* one.
Or, perhaps 'legacy' hardware will get some much needed added life, by utilizing ultra-fast 32-bit processors that just do work far faster than their 64-bit equivalents-simply because code maturity will force opmitizations.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The 4GB memory barrier is fast-aproaching for high-end users, and dealing with it is a MESS. Most motherboards don't support PAE (either due to lack of re-mappable PCI address space, or even lack of 36-bit address lines!), so we have a hard-limit of 2-3GB in the most popular version of Vista (32-bit). This is going to be a rough few years for game developers.
I really don't see why Microsoft went 32-bit on this version anyway...I'd say over %80 of the potential upgrade platforms and over %95 of all shipping PCs today support x86-64 mode. But when you look back, history paves the way:
Windows 386 = Windows 2.0 with 32-bit enhancements bolted-on. Equivilant of Windows XP 64
Windows 3 = crossover version with support for 16-bit and 32-bit processors. Equivilant of Vista.
Windows 95 = supports only 32-bit processors. Equivilant to the next revision of Windows.
Too bad Microsoft didn't have the balls to jump the gun and make Vista 64-bit only.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Windows XP came out in October 2001. Vista in November 2006. That is little over 5 years, not 20.
However, I understand your sentiment.
"If God had intended us to walk he would not have invented roller skates." -- Willy Wonka
But running an emulator just for a quick game of Missile Command, Asteroids, Centipede, Battlezone, tempest, Tetris, etc, etc, is annoying.
The other day I put Win 3.11 up against Windows Vista at Chess. Just to clarify I played Chess Titans up against Chess.exe from the Microsoft Entertainment pack, at expert level.
With Vista being the newcomer Titan's got to play first. After about 30 seconds of thinking, Vista made it's _first_ move, in which chess.exe responded to immediately. From there a furious battle across the board started, with chess.exe taking more and more time to think along the way.
After about a half an hour of playtime the game ended with Windows 3.11 crashing, In some sort of ironic twist, one move from checkmating.. Vista.
Heh.
Chess.exe might have had an advantage in that it is thinking on the opponents turn, but I'm still surprised Chess Titans was beat out by a fifteen year old program made for a computer a thousand times slower. Go Microsoft!
I've got 10.4.9 running on a computer I bought in 2000, that makes it 7 years, not 2 for running the latest OS X. It is true though that there were 1998 computer that can not run OS X, and OS X was released in 2001--so that was a 3 year window. But at the time, 10.1 wasn't really ready for prime time, and OS 9 was still the main OS.
As has been mentioned before on /. Microsoft will require signed drivers on their 64 bit OS
i t/kmsigning.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/64b
Implications of this are:
1. Chilling effect to new devices.
2. Sets the stage for tighter DRM handcuffs.
From Microsoft's perspective these aren't bad things as they directly benefit Microsoft shareholders though, so I guess it's a wash.
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
by the time the successor to Vista comes out. I doubt very much anyone will care about it not running on ~20 billion-year-old hardware. Not even Mac users :-)
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
that we'll see 32 bit computing for another 20 years?
32, 16 and 8 where it's useful. In the free world, it's just a compile option. Even M$ can't be so stupid as to disregard embedded and low power platforms.
This is just M$ psycho-hype along the lines of "DOS is dead" they used to move Win3.1, 95, 98, W2K and XP as they slowly and painfully compiled their little system to 32 bits. That took them 20 years, not because it was hard but because they wanted to charge you for every "upgrade". Such stuff makes less sense in a world full of free alternatives that already offer the same things.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Beginning with Solaris 10, 32-bit Hardware is no longer supported on SPARC.
The operating system still ships with support to run 32-bit applications.
Microsoft will certainly never be a serious contender in the tiers of
professional computing filled by Sun and IBM and I know you can argue that
with me for arguments sake but after everything is said and done it is
still IBM Mainframe/AIX muscle and Sun Solaris tendon that make the world
go around. And as far as rotating the globe goes, Microsoft excels of course at
marketing spin so while the major players all abandoned 32-bit more or less
quietly one wonders how Microsoft will flaunt and celebrate the fact in
front of a impressionable lay public.
I heard Vista's successor was named Microsoft Windows Forever. It was supposed to be out last month, but they decided to rewrite it to use a new engine. Shouldn't be long now ...
Yes.
2002
What? Windows XP Pro is crap, bloated, and has ridiculous hardware requirements. Wasting system resources on a Fisher-price UI? No thanks! 2000 is the last reasonably respectible OS Microsoft has made.
2000
Windows 2000? I think not -- it requires 64MB of RAM for god's sake; and recommends 128MB! Who has that much RAM? Bloated piece of crap. 98 is the last reasonably respectible OS Microsoft has made.
1996
Windows 98? I think not! It barely does more than Windows 95 did, but have you seen how much bigger the sysreqs are due to bloated crap like active desktop and IE4? No, 95 is the last reasonably respectible OS Microsoft has made.
1995
No, Windows 95 is crap, bloated, and has ridiculous hardware requirements. Can you believe it needs a 32-bit CPU? What applications need 32-bit, anyway? None! Bigger isn't always better, you know; and that's certainly true for 32bit/16bit. 3.11 is the last reasonably respectible OS Microsoft has made.
1992
Windows 3.11? Crap, bloated, and has ridiculous hardware requirements. What use is a GUI, anyway? I can do things faster at the command line. Give me MS-DOS 5 and-day.
1991
MS-DOS 5? Crap, bloated, and has ridiculous hardware requirements. COMMAND.COM is over 47kB, can you believe it? I long for the good old days of 2.0 and 3.0.
1983
MS-DOS 2/3? Bah. Who needs the bloat? Give me something lean and mean like CP/M any say.
1976
CP/M? A general purpose operating system? Who needs it? Everyone knows it's more efficient to have different machines to do different tasks. Do one thing and do it well, I say.
etc., etc.
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Not exactly.
:
HP collaborated with the design of the Itanium. Thus pulling out of the market before the Itanium arrived was a logical decision from the point of view that they were going to replace the Alpha with their newer baby jointly-developed with Intel.
MIPS continued for some time after the Itanium and was progressively dropped when its sales went to low, both from workstation and embed markets.
(PARISC : I don't know. I suspect it to be somewhat similar situation).
What kills processors is two fold
The main reasons is a big ball and chain called "binary legacy".
- Business are used to run Windows on their workstation. Microsoft has never supported additional platforms for long time (Alpha has only had 1 NT version made for it. Itanium had only 1 XP version made for it) because supporting multiple platform is hard for them (the only reason they'll keep support for 64bit x86_64, is that they'll kill 32bits instead and thus they'll still have only 1 main architecture to support). Thus there was a lack of interest from the largest consumers because of this absence (of course there are a lot of shops running Unices. But they aren't profitable on the same level as Dell's consumers).
- And even if you had the corresponding OS for your platform, you still need to have software to run on it. And the problem at any time that something new arrives, is that there a huge decade of legacy to run of it. Yes every time a new designs arrive, it may be largely superior. But corporation's PHB don't give a damn about deisng quality. They only want to know if their applications will run. Alpha wasn't compatible at all with x86 application. Neither 68k back in its days. Nor MIPS. Nor PARISC. Itanium had lousy compatibility because it was mostly done in software and thus was running much slower than the rest. Transmeta only survived because it has decent speed in running x86 code and has very low power requirements. The main reason that Itanium flunked and AMD64 prevailed is that the later was an extension to x86. Yes, this extension is a hack. But a hack that has full backward compatibility, and that can be plugged into a PC and run today's OS with today's applications. Backward compatibility has been both the x86's main advantage and main problem.
- Also there's the problem of drivers. Even if the newer arch. uses standard bus such as PCI where you can plug all your existing hardware, you still have to get drivers for it. And few manufacturer are going through the hassle of supporting another additional binary format. Linux is already too much for them, exotic CPU are beyond them. Early adopter of Windows XP 64bits (both Itanium and AMD64) will remember.
- Compare this to the Linux world where, becuase the source is freely available, and there project such as Debian that take care to have only very stable code. : switching to a newer architecture is mostly a matter of recompiling the code for the new platform. That's why Linux was almost available overnight for AMD64, running on Transmeta simulators before the actual hardware was available. It mostly had only to be recompiled and could be done easily because it leveraged work done to port the code to other 64bits platforms (Sparc64, or the other 64bits arch you mention).
In a perfect world were everyone is using opensource, those arch. you mention could have survived, no mater what marketing is heard from Intel and every one could benefit from the latest great processor with clean and perfect architecture. But in a world were Microsoft has a huge monopoly on desktop machines and everyone runs binary apps and drivers, only hacks of the pre-existing arch can have significant impact. That's why you haven't seen anything revolutionary for the past 35 years (software compatible since the 8bit 8008 in 1972, binary compatible since the
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This decision by Microsoft to drop 32bit support *may* boost Linux (and other OS) adoption.
Currently I know some friends who uses old machines and a lot of machines in the university (specially in labs). All those are still based on P2/P3 or other CPUs of that era. 10 years old processors.
"A next Windows" has no chance of happening before 2013, considering their current release speed of 6 years between XP and Vista. Worse if we take into account that Microsoft has promised to build an entirely new capability-based microkernel OS. Which is very unlikely, given their tendency of scraping newer non-eyecandy idea out of Vista because of time constraints.
By the time Microsoft finally releases their next piece of shit, there will be a lot of 10 years old, 2003-era processors everywhere (Intel Pentium-IV, 32-bits only Intel Core, AMD Athlon XP, early 32bits AMD Semprons) :
This mean that when Windows-the-next (tm) comes out, either there will be a massive switch toward other OS (very likely in university labs) or the new OS will see an even slower reception than Windows Vista is currently experiencing (very likely on Joe 6-pack's older 32bits home machine).
The last similar switch of technology requirement was Windows 95 : the first consumer oriented widely diffused Microsoft OS that could only run on 32bits protected mode CPUs.
In 1995 (okay, 1996) when it came out, Intel 80386 where 10 years old and had finished displacing the 16bit only older 80286.
99% of home computer where equipped with 32bits Windows 95-"mostly"-capable CPU ranging from 386 to Pentium.
That's why it went went "somewhat more smoothly".
Throwing out the 32bit arch is TOO MUCH early. Microsoft should wait until it is completely phased out of the market, in most segment (if possible, including the small embed/ITX market of people making low-power boxes. Current VIA chips are 32bits only). The problem is, maintaining compatibility for more than 1 architecture has always been too much work for Microsoft (Alpha and MIPS got only a couple of NT releases. Itanium hasn't got a much high number of OSes), in contrary of the OpenSource community.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In order for a vendor to provide Microsoft approved "Certified for Vista" drivers, the company also has to release an x64 version of the driver.
None of this touches the twin problems which makes Microsoft's release schedules so awful: the religion of backwards compatibility and a overly-managed, near-chaotic corporate culture which emphasizes endless meetings and paper trails over innovation. Both of these items stem from something Microsoft can't control, which is the necesity of leaning on Windows/Word as their two dominant profit engines. Essentially, Microsoft has worked their way into a position in which true innovation (of the kind Apple was forced into with the failures of Copland and Pink and the adoption of OS X) is nearly impossible, because anything which threatens to cut off a sizeable portion of their user base directly threatens the company's bottom line.
In other words, the problem isn't Windows per se, or 32- versus 64-bit, or any other technical issue. The problem is Microsoft needs Windows simultaneously to be the same old operating system you've been using for years and the latest, greatest thing, and it can't be both. For a technology point of view, the best thing would be to really remake Windows from the ground up as Apple was forced to do with OS X and just tell people that if they bought their machine before 2001 they're out of luck. But they can't, and won't, do this, so their release schedule will continue to be contrained by the need to do two opposing things at the same time.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
They don't require MS's signature on drivers, just a signature. You can self sign. Many drivers are signed that way. The Creative Labs audio drivers, for example. Those pieces of shit wouldn't pass WHQL validation, but they don't have to. Creative self signs them. Likewise the Truecrypt kernel module is self signed (though not because it sucks).
This doesn't stop free, open drivers, just requires the people releasing them to sign them. If the driver isn't MS signed, Vista pops up a little box saying "The driver is signed by Company X, do you want to trust them and install?" Click yes and it installs, and you aren't bothered again.
The idea isn't to stop third parties, it is to prevent people from compromising drivers. If you think you are installing Tryecrypt, but the digital signature is instead form "Joe's L33t Hax0r Shack", you should probably think about stopping the install and talking to the TC foundation since they have probably been hacked.
UPDATE | Microsoft's Alex Heaton has clarified the comment of Bill Laing, on which this story is based. "Bill Laing, a General Manager in the Microsoft Windows Server Division, has been quoted as saying that Windows Server 2008 will be the last 32-bit operating system. Bill is a server guy and indeed Windows Server 2008 is the last 32-bit server operating system - all future operating systems for server hardware from Microsoft beyond Windows Server 2008 will be 64-bit," Heaton said.
"A few folks took Bill's comments on Windows Server and applied them to Windows Client deriving that Windows Vista would be the last 32-bit operating system. That is an incorrect extension. While Windows Vista includes both 32-bit and 64-bit and there is a growing community of drivers for 64-bit Windows Vista we have not decided when Windows Client will follow Windows Server and become 64-bit only."