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Windows 7 To Be 256-Core Aware

Posted by kdawson on from the so-they-say-now dept.

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).

13 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. 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 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.
  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. Licensing by LingNoi · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

  8. 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.

  9. 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
  10. 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.