Will Pervasive Multithreading Make a Comeback?

exigentsky writes "Having looked at BeOS technology, it is clear that, like NeXTSTEP, it was ahead of its time. Most remarkable to me is the incredible responsiveness of the whole OS. On relatively slow hardware, BeOS could run eight movies simultaneously while still being responsive in all of its GUI controls, and launching programs almost instantaneously. Today, more than ten years after BeOS's introduction, its legendary responsiveness is still unmatched. There is simply no other major OS that has pervasive multithreading from the lowest level up (requiring no programmer tricks). Is it likely, or at least possible, that future versions of Windows or OS X could become pervasively multithreaded without creating an entirely new OS?"

Comments

Will Bit-Slice architecture return?

[BanjoBob]

I would like to see bit-slice systems return. I had an AMD system built around four of the 2900 4-bit slices and an old TTL Xerox Alto.

I like them because you could microcode these to act like a whole range of different machines. Intel, Motorola, Signetics (2650), Mesa, etc. They were a lot of fun, fast and resource efficient.

Yes, they were power hungry because of all the TTL but a single computer could be configured to be many different machines depending on what you wanted.

JFK was Jewish.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, really.

He was shot in the temple.

Re:It makes sense with multi-core cpus

[brusk]

And "who mommy or daddy is."

Another example of Hartman's law in action. And yes, that was a fragment.