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).

Comments

Blocking up the fail whales blowhole

[Anonymous Coward]

(Silverlight required).

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

Re:Blocking up the fail whales blowhole

[Z00L00K]

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.

Re:Blocking up the fail whales blowhole

[hairyfeet]

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.

Enough?

[Fex303]

I think we can all agree, 256 cores is enough for anybody.

I just put the finishing touches on my 257 core machine, you insensitive clod!

Re:Enough?

[impaledsunset]

I think there is an error in the summary, I believe that 256 cores is the minimum requirement for Windows 7, not the supported number of cores, so your machine might actually be fine with 7.

Re:Enough?

[ModernGeek]

You can link to the exact spot in the video by adding #t=XmXs at the end.

Another excuse not to RTFA

[sakdoctor]

Suggestion for new /. poll. Who has installed Silverlight? (Silverlight required)

Re:Another excuse not to RTFA

[PerfectSmurf]

Opera browser and NO Silverlight here. That said there is no article to read but an interview to watch and the summary is wrong - it only requires Silverlight if you're using Internet Explorer. It streams video (.wmv) just fine to me.

Linux: 4096

[setagllib]

The most recent mainline Linux release has integrated mature patches for 4096 core scalability, that have been developed by high performance computing corporations and tested in the field for years. Previous versions were rated for "only" 1024 cores. That still makes 256 look like a Gameboy.

It must be really hard for Microsoft to compete in the HPC space. I almost feel bad for them. Almost.

Re:Linux: 4096

[BeShaMo]

The most recent mainline Linux release has integrated mature patches for 4096 core scalability, that have been developed by high performance computing corporations and tested in the field for years. Previous versions were rated for "only" 1024 cores. That still makes 256 look like a Gameboy.

It must be really hard for Microsoft to compete in the HPC space. I almost feel bad for them. Almost.

I think these comparisons have to stop. They give Linux an unfair bias. Linux does not have to spend resources on things like cool names their releases, and wages for people with excellent chairthrowing abilities, so naturally they can instead use the resources on developing software. Come back when each release of Linux is given inspiring names like Linux XP and they have proper chairthrowing capabilities, then we shall make a fair assesment.

Re:Linux: 4096

[eclectus]

It won't take too long. Sun's T2 chip has 64 threads, and the T5440 that I have at the office has 4 chips in it, for 256 threads, all in a 4u chassis. Granted, it doesn't run windows, but seriously CMT chips are out and growing fast. BTW, the T2 cpu is only about an inch quare, and it's only done on 65nm tech, not even 40nm.

MS has a really bad habit of....

[3seas]

.... 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".

Re:eh

[hedwards]

Sigh, first off, it was 640kb of ram, and second off it's not even his quote. And additionally I'm not sure who really said it, but it wasn't Gates.

The 640kb wasn't meant in the long term it was meant at that point, a time when they were talking about how to divy up the limited ram. It was the sensible way to proceed, it's just that drivers and such didn't get loaded into the rest of the ram causing huge headaches for gaming.

Even at that point it was asinine to suggest that ram wouldn't become more common in machines. I think at that point they'd already seen ram increase by a few thousand percentage points easy if not more.

Re:Memory scaling

[setagllib]

Linux supports NUMA which largely solves that problem, and ccNUMA which solves it even better. It's all about locality once again. Linux has been running on multi-thousand CPU machines for years, and has been optimised and refined by the stakeholders of those projects, so it's not a toy project to show off.

Re:eh

[Immortal Poet]

Supposedly it's an urban legend that he even said that, because no one on the internet can actually source the quote. And if the internet can't find it, then it probably doesn't exist. To sate those who want at least something, however, here is a relevant quote from 1989:

"I have to say that in 1981, making those decisions, I felt like I was providing enough freedom for 10 years. That is, a move from 64k to 640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time. Well, it didn't - it took about only 6 years before people started to see that as a real problem."

Re:Hmm

[Khuffie]

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.

Re:Hmm

[DannyO152]

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.

Re:Hmm

[Khuffie]

Ya, I really wish they get rid of their multiple editions. I see only need for Windows 7 and Windows 7 Server (and even if they want to stretch it, Windows 7 Home and Windows 7 Business/Pro like they did in XP), but 5 versions are ridiculous.

Re:eh

[A Friendly Troll]

I've read that it was an IBM engineer who said it. Could be another urban legend.

Anyway, Gates denied saying it: http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484 (Oldest link - it's from 1997 - that I could find.)

QUESTION: "I read in a newspaper that in l981 you said '640K of memory should be enough for anybody.' What did you mean when you said this?"

ANSWER: "I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time."

Gates goes on a bit about 16-bit computers and megabytes of logical address space, but the kid's question (will this boy never work at Microsoft?) clearly rankled the billionaire visionary.

"Meanwhile, I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again."

Re:Differing theory

[Gavagai80]

You tell me that making OSes that crash every few hours and have to reboot all the time is part of a "mature industry"?

This is obviously your own personal problem for downloading malware or whatever. Just because you break your operating systems doesn't mean they aren't mature. My last reboot was several months ago (not due to a crash -- last crash was probably a year ago), and the last time I used Windows (2003) I actually found XP quite stable and not in need of any regular rebooting (except for security updates).