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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).
I won't believe a thing Microsoft says about Windows 7 until I see it. Microsoft is like a political candidate running for office. It makes a ton of promises you know it'll never keep.
How will Vista (and, indeed, Linux) manage memory across so many cores? The machine can't be SMP, because you can't maintain data cache coherence across more than about eight cores. So it has to have a completely new memory model. I wonder how this can be achieved without major changes to the kernel?
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
256 Cores really isn't that much.
Yea it is a lot of a PC but not for some of the real high end stuff. In college I worked on a MasPar with 1024 processors.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
.... 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".
I have another theory. MS, not wanting to waste time, money, people, and any other resource on developing something that may not do well in the market place, tests the waters to see if anyone actually wants the product. Maybe if they did that with Vista, they wouldn't have that train wreck.
Microsoft is a mature company in a mature industry. The days of investing a product and crossing your fingers that it will sell are long gone. They need to think like a car company now.
To be fair, I think Microsoft this time around have been really careful with what they promise for Windows 7. Seems like they learned from their mistakes with Vista, and now that they have a stable, solid kernel (whether you'd like to believe it or not), a lot of the headaches from Vista's development are simply not there.
...but 256 core PERFORMANCE is not.
Overhead for an O.S. to manage memory and I/O contention rises dramatically *way* down in the CPU-count scale (like around 8 CPUs). It is one thing to let those CPUs be available to the exclusive use of a particular CPU-aware application, such as a custom video frame rendering app. But give an application-ignorant O.S. the job of keeping processes from stepping on each other in a 256-way box and you'll see a box whose primary workload is lock and wait management.
It's not surprising that "big box" manufacturers like IBM and HP charge so much for their high-end gear. It takes particularly tailored efforts and certain types of workloads to drive performance out of those things, and even there, performance tends to fall dramatically after 32 CPUs. It's not surprising that they employ partitioning and virtualization to divide and conquer the use of so many CPUs rather than actually treat them like one big box.
Of course, there will always be a number of consumers who will pay for Big-CPU-Count Bragging Rights, ignoring the fact that the last 50% of their CPUs deliver less incremental performance than the first 10%.
...but OTOH I remember someone (IIRC it might have been from IBM) saying that nobody would ever need a hard drive bigger than 10MB. But whether or not my recollections are correct, such predictions are inevitably consigned to the "famous last words" category.
Based on the announcements on Windows 7 and the reviews I thought too that they had improved the performance of Windows 7 vs. Vista. Then I found an article by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols that might explain the "glowing" reviews at Microsoft's PDC. It seems that Microsoft may have permanently "loaned" $2,000 laptops with 2.4GHz Intel dual cores + 3GB ram to the "reviewers" to review Windows 7. If so, that's not the first time they tried that stunt (Vista was the first that I recall). So in the answer to the question, "Can a leopard change its spots?" if the above is correct then the answer in Microsoft's case seems to be "No." Here's the url: http://blogs.computerworld.com/microsoft_bribes_again
If you're going by their track record, it's an easy answer: None.
Well even if it does, my first question would be: Which version?
Vista comes in a bewildering array of versions, with the fully uncrippled version (Ultimate) costing a truly eye-watering amount of money. Given that Windows 7 is meant to be "an improved version of Vista", I'd say the probability of it following the same pattern is high indeed. So how much will the 256-core version cost and how many will the other versions support?
I really wish they get rid of their multiple editions. I see only need for Windows 7 and Windows 7 Server
Heck, I wish they'd go further than that. I think there should only be Windows 7, period. If you want to have different sets of optimizations for desktop/server/home/corporate use, make it something you configure in control panel, not something you need a different version of the OS for.
Our IT deparment must be nuts for running Windows Compute Cluster on their system then. Running on 4604 cores no less. It's also the largest Windows cluster (2:50 mark) in the world (and before anyone's head explodes, yes it does run Linux).
How much the cluster is actually used on the Windows side I don't know, but it is there and available for use.
There is maybe one feature that MS *must* get into Windows 7...
It's gonna need it, considering this is the follow-up to Vista. Ironically, non-Windows users will be the ultimate beneficiaries of MS's bloatware: fast, cheap hardware, designed to run Vista and Windows 7, will be a screaming delight for Linux and OS X users.
"640K of memory should be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
How big is the install for the server stuff anyway? Honestly these days you can get a terabyte for something like USD$150. I'd be surprised that anyone would actually give a damn about a few extra gigs here and there being used by their OS.
Besides, wouldn't most of those features be compressed on the HD anyway unless they are installed? (As I understand it, "uninstalled" some Windows portions merely compresses the unwanted files on your hard drive to conserve space, but they're still there to reinstall.)
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Based on their past sales policy, the 256 core version will probably be the "enterprise server" that costs a few thousand dollars. Unless increasing competition forces the prices down.
Not that it will matter for the average PC user:
Today, the typical PC might have a quad core CPU, but more than one CPU socket is the domain of expensive workstations and servers. The cores per CPU might scale to 16 cores some years from now, but that is the maximum I see Joe Sixpack using.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Basically, this is the same thing that happened with XP. Windows 2000 took 4 years get out the door, and had lots of compatibility and other issues, then XP came along a mere 2 years later and was an order of magnitude more usable for home and desktop users.
This is reflected in the way XP was 5.1, and 7 is 6.1.
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Give someone a top of the line laptop to keep for free and you're likely to get lots of glowing reviews.
It's a classic conflict of interest.
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
It isn't that difficult. The themes service is still there along with the default XP theme. Basically it comes down to this:
Enable DirectX, Enable services that are critical to what you need to do (sound etc), disable the shutdown event tracker and tell Windows to prioritize programs instead of background services.
In a nutshell that's all you really need to do. Hardly complex - and it runs a lot better since everything is DISABLED by default rather than enabled as in standard XP Home/Pro.