Slashdot Mirror


Windows 7 To Be 256-Core Aware

unassimilatible writes "As new features of Windows 7 continue to trickle out, ZDNet is now reporting that it will scale to 256 processors. While one has to wonder, like with Vista, how many of the teased features will actually make it into the final OS, I think we can all agree, 256 cores is enough for anybody." This Mark Russinovich interview has some technical details (Silverlight required).

30 of 441 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While one has to wonder, like with Vista, how many of the teased features will actually make it into the final OS

    If you're going by their track record, it's an easy answer: None.

    1. Re:Hmm by DannyO152 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, this decade has been about TCDGADA (The customers do give a damn about:). First networking inflexibility, then security, then interface, then performance. Now if we can hold their feet to the fire about crippleware (five editions, only one with the all the features that matter), file formats, and equitable interoperability, Windows might become a product we work with instead of around.

    2. Re:Hmm by aaron.axvig · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, because people never complain about the amount of HDD Vista already takes up (do you really think 200 million (rough guess) want Active Directory Server sitting around on their HDD)? Do you think admins want to have to put in a disk to install that part? Do you think they want to wait for it to download?

      Do you think Microsoft wants to charge only ~$100 for their OS on servers? Do you think home users want to pay ~$900 for their desktop OS? Do you think home users are going to be OK meeting in the middle?

      This is like saying Filezilla should include FTP Server along with their FTP Client. Stupid.

    3. Re:Hmm by RedK · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Is there a particular reason you have to install everything on the DVD to your HD ? Is IIS that integrated into the OS that if it is on the same DVD as the kernel and UI, it automatically gets installed ? What you say makes no sense. They could ship 1 and only 1 version of Windows. Your license could enable/disable some package trees, which you could choose to install or not. Are we in 2008 with DVD media or in 1986 where floppy number is a determining factor in what you ship ?

      --
      "Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
      Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
  2. Blocking up the fail whales blowhole by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    (Silverlight required).

    My browser already supports audio, video, vector graphics and a scripting language.

    1. Re:Blocking up the fail whales blowhole by Z00L00K · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So why the limit?

      Are they only having a byte to store the core ID?

      Today it's feasible to build yourself a machine with 32 cores using 4-core AMD:s 4-core processors and a Tyan n4250QE with a M4985 daughterboard. This will give you 64 cores to play with.

      In a not too far future we will see processors with a larger number of cores and therefore we will soon bang our heads into that wall. At least those of us that toy with parallelism.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    2. Re:Blocking up the fail whales blowhole by SunTzuWarmaster · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are missing the point. You can BUY 8 cores right now for your grandma from Dell.

      This means that businesses are buying 64 core machines and up for things like graphics rendering, real-time image processing, and server loads. Hell, the place I work for has a 64 core machine for handling E-mail remotely.

      Within a 1-2 years, even people that WANT to run Microsoft products in a high-end environment will not be able to.

      Yes, you are correct, Grandma will not have a 256 core machine on Windows 7, and will probably not face that choice. However, many things that she interacts with (her E-mail, or ebay, for instance) will not even be supported.

    3. Re:Blocking up the fail whales blowhole by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Which I think shows what I have been saying for awhile now,which is that since Ballmer took over they have lost their way by focusing on the home rather than the enterprise. I mean just look at what they have been throwing their weight behind in the last few years: You have Zune=iPod,Xbox=Apple TV, and there is no way that anyone even thought of business needs once when they made Vista. Aero in a business OS? WTF?

      IMHO Microsoft under Ballmer has forgotten what made them the 800 pound gorilla in the first place. It was business that bought the long term contracts and support agreements. It was business that bought huge amounts of hardware every 3 years(thus making their customers the OEMs happy) and finally it was business that sat their OS in front of millions of users who then wanted the same OS at home because that was what they were used to.

      Hopefully getting laughed at with the Vista debacle has taught them a few lessons. And if this 256 core limit is strictly for the desktop,and they don't cripple their brand by releasing 5 different versions with different levels of crippling to confuse the buyers,then it might sell well. IMHO there should be no more than 3 versions,Home,Business,and volume licensed Enterprise,but going back to Home and Pro would be best. But with the rate of cores seeming to jump almost weekly if the server has that limit it could really be bad news. After all the Intel roadmap already has 8 and 12 core versions on it,and IIRC that only goes to 2011. With a server it is expected to last at least 5 years,and with the market in a downturn Win7 really needs to shine and cut down on the confusion and BS that we saw with Vista. As someone who has to work on Windows machines I personally hope they got their act together. Because it is bad enough trying to find XP drivers for the Vista boxes that folks bring in to be changed,I don't want to even think about having to do that in 2011.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    4. Re:Blocking up the fail whales blowhole by Idiomatick · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Xbox=Apple TV
      Rofl... apple tv was such a threat they made xbox? I dunno what fantasy land you live in but xbox was definitely about video games not a flopping piece of garbage that sold what .5million?

    5. Re:Blocking up the fail whales blowhole by dontmakemethink · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are missing the point. You can BUY 8 cores right now for your grandma from Dell. This means that businesses are buying 64 core machines and up for things like graphics rendering, real-time image processing, and server loads. Hell, the place I work for has a 64 core machine for handling E-mail remotely.

      Yes but once you go past 64 it probably makes more sense to cluster several boxen rather than put all your cores in one basket. Four 64-core boxes clustered can operate at 75% while updating each box independently, where one 256-core box comes to a grinding halt for every security update.

      --

      War as we knew it was obsolete
      Nothing could beat complete denial
      - Emily Haines
    6. Re:Blocking up the fail whales blowhole by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah, no. Apple tv announced in 2006, Xbox released in 2001. The ipod was also released in 2001. It wasn't really that ubiquitous or even successful ( mac only at that point) at the time the xbox was released. Microsoft has always had their eye on the living room. From web tv, to ultimate tv to the xbox.

      Maybe the quote you read was referring to the xbox 360? In any case, the 360 is cool. No one gets made fun of because they have a 360. Not like when they admit they have a zune anyways.

      --
      Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
  3. MS has a really bad habit of.... by 3seas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    .... testing the waters via marketing that which may or not come into some form of existence.

    They use the same tactic as well, to help suppress any interest a competitor might be getting with some technology by claiming they are doing the same, where often enough they kill teh support teh competitor was getting while never producing that which they claimed they were doing.

    So take this current claim in such a light and you'll know "believe it when you know you have it and are using it, not even a split second before".

  4. No Silverlight here. by argent · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No Silverlight, no Moonlight, it's bad enough that I've got to deal with Microsoft's broken security zones at work, I'm not going to start running son-of-ActiveX at home.

  5. Re:Linux: 4096 by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's a moot point. It's likely that processors will eventually have more than 256 cores, but that's going to take a long time, I'm not necessarily convinced that we will. At some point we will hit the smallest possible transister size and I'm not sure that will leave physical room for all the extra cores without moving to a much larger chip size.

    That being said, if we're still using Windows 7 when mainstream computers have more than 256 cores there's something very wrong going on. Linux probably will need that kind of scalability, but it's because of the sort of rolling release schedule where releases are expected to be based upon the previous version, if loosely at times.

  6. Re:Enough? by risinganger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Like anybody in their right mind would ever consider putting windows on a 1024 processor machine used for 'real high end stuff'.

    Let's remember for a moment where most installations of windows will be.

  7. Re:Another excuse not to RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Actually i never had the need to install it, i think that the only SL sites that i tried to visit were MS's ones

  8. Re:Another excuse not to RTFA by Johnny+Loves+Linux · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The thing that gets me is: was this a bait and switch to get people to install siverlight to see something that sounded really interesting? When I saw the "Need to upgrade browser/install siverlight" I felt nothing but digust.

    Here is an opportunity for Microsoft to demonstrate something cool and what do they do to all the folks who can never get silverlight to run on their operating systens? Yeah, tell them "Piss off! You're unclean! You can't watch our video!" That's a great way Microsoft to try convince folks to give your technology a try. Way to go Ohio.

    The second thing I noticed was the sudden feeling that this was a poor imitation of Google Tech talks, in which you can watch the videos in any operating system, because google is more interested in getting the word out than trying to "sell" or "slip under the radar" some new multimedia transport mechanism.

  9. Re:Microsoft scumbags are out early today. by BotnetZombie · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If you click on the OP's score, you'll see that there is no modding history unlike for your own comment that has a +1 karma bonus. This suggests to me that the OP has bad karma from previous downmods, i.e. he has not been downmodded for this post.

  10. I first read that as "286 cores" by Nimey · · Score: 2, Insightful

    and was impressed by how much they'd slimmed down Windows 7.

    --
    Hail Eris, full of mischief...

    E pluribus sanguinem
  11. Licensing by LingNoi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...and you'll need a license for every core.

    1. Re:Licensing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Right now I have a PC with 2 x Quad-core computers and vista doesn't cost more. Where did you get that info from?

  12. Re:Can't Agree by volsung · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Because people who get the joke are going to laugh and move on. Only people who don't get the joke, or who want to make a lame follow-on joke, are going to hit the submit button. (Or people who are annoyed by the previous groups.)

    Self-selection bias explains a lot about the stuff you find on the Internet.

  13. Re:Linux: 4096 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Says the idiot who never saw such an obvious joke?

    Hand in your geek card and go browse 4chans /b/, you would fit right in there.

  14. Re:Ripping off the User by aaron.axvig · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ask yourself, when was the the last time a Microsoft upgrade made your applications perform faster, require less resources, or made you more efficient?

    Actually all three, with Vista's intelligent caching of programs into memory. Almost every program I use launches instantly, because I (like almost everyone else) have very set usage patterns, and Vista has picked up on them. And if you don't have the extra memory, it's not required.

  15. Silverligth required! by mashiyach · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What kind of shit-site is linked to?

    "Microsoft Silverlight may not be supported on your computer's hardware or operating system. "

    When going to that site http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Mark-Russinovich-Inside-Windows-7/

    it suggests Install Silverlight !

    then when coming to http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx?mode=sysreq&reason=unsupportedplatform

    So those claiming that Silverlight were only needing JavaScript (Ajax) on the client-side were lying!

    Kepp your shitty site!

  16. Re:Linux: 4096 by Macthorpe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What I still am unclear of, is why you have to bitch and moan? If you don't want to use it, don't use it. Simple as that.

    If only everyone who doesn't like Windows did that, Slashdot would be much better off.

    --
    "It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
  17. Re:Enough? by afabbro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Our IT deparment must be nuts for running Windows Compute Cluster on their system then.

    Couldn't have said it better myself.

    --
    Advice: on VPS providers
  18. Monolithic Operating Systems by wfstanle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is a problem with your argument. You are thinking in terms of a monolithic operating system. They could keep everything on the installation disks and only install the parts that are desired (like Linux is). If you later on needed another service you could put in in with what is on the installation disk.

  19. Re:eh by houghi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That can be indeed the source where it is turned into "640k should be enough for everybody" Most likely he has said the same to many people. Not everything was always written down. Sometimes things are written down much later either from rememberence or from others.
    That makes it not so much a litteral quote, but more an idea.

    So in 1981 he said that 640k would be enough for everybody for the next ten years. After 6 years it wasn't anymore, so during 4 years there was a moment where he had claimed that 640K was enough and it wasn't.

    For me with the above it is clear that he has said it, even if in other words.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  20. GPGPUs by The+Clockwork+Troll · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It would be considerably more interesting if Windows 7 offered an out-of-the-box processing abstraction on top of GPGPUs, PhysX type accelerators, and other non-traditional "cores".

    Most enthusiast PCs and increasing numbers of mainstream PCs have been running a multi-core video card for a while now - it would be nice to see the development interface to these standardized, so one didn't necessarily have to learn e.g. CUDA.

    --

    There are no karma whores, only moderation johns