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Microsoft Leaks Details of 128-bit Windows 8
Barence writes "Microsoft is planning to make Windows 8 a 128-bit operating system, according to details leaked from the software giant's Research department. The discovery came to light after Microsoft Research employee Robert Morgan carelessly left details of his work on the social-networking site LinkedIn. His page read: 'Working in high-security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and long-term projects. Research & Development projects including 128-bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan. Forming relationships with major partners: Intel, AMD, HP and IBM.' It has since been removed."
Windows 7 isn't even officially released and already nonsense is leaking about the next release with promises they can't keep.
FIrst let them release WinFS.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
None of the linked articles say that the 128 bits is for the filesystem only, but I still believe you're right:
Making the entire os 128-bit would simply waste a _lot_ of memory, for zero real gain. (Rather the opposite: A larger working set always leads to slower code.)
Having 128 bits available for filesystem/storage makes it quite feasible to have globally unique addresses for everything, across huge populations of machines.
This has been done before, afair IBM has used a 128 (or 129!) bit address space for their AS400 platform, where everything is memory mapped.
I.e. there is no visible file system, you just access objects by address (which is really a handle).
I believe Amazon's cloud storage is similar, in that the only way to access a blob of data is via a 128-bit handle.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
In terms of memory, 64 bits can address 18 exabytes. Even Google isn't going to be using that for a decade or so. Assuming Moore's law continues, it will be about half a century before PCs need that much RAM. Dealing with 128 bit numbers for mathematics is of limited use (if you do want to deal with them, you'll probably have a need for 256 byte and 512 byte numbers as well).
And it's not like there's been much perception of a need for 128 bit CPUs. 64 bit processors have been around since the 1960's with fairly mainstream CPUs sine the early 90s. I don't think this is like RAM. I think there's a limit to how many bits we can use.
The article, and indeed the blurb he wrote in his profile, does not necessarily point to a 128bit OS, just that the Windows 8 kernel will have 128bit 'architecture compatibility', which probably means hes ensuring that they remove all burdens of porting to the 128bit architecture now, rather than later.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Filter error: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.
It's a sad day when you can no longer post ASCII art onto a forum. Have we come so far that we've forgotten where we come from?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Shared memory space among lots of computers, using IP (possibly IPv6) as a protocol.
That's probably what they are referring to if they mean 128 bit address space (not datapath).
The senior researcher's profile said he was: "Working in high security department [emphasis mine] for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and longterm projects. Research & Development projects including 128-bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan. Forming relationships with major partners: Intel, AMD, HP and IBM."
My first reaction was that if you can't fix the security problems in the people, you surely can't expect to fix the security problems in the software. But that might be a little hasty.
My guess is that the actual security gaffe here was little or nothing. He mentioned he worked in this department, and that they have future plans that exceed today's capabilities. Meh. So what. If he had posted the details of what he was doing, then it would have been newsworthy. As it is, this barely notable. Any one of us here could probably guess that MS likely has people looking into the progression beyond 64 bit technology.
It is reasonable to believe that at some point in the next several years the hardware companies he mentions will have some plan to start building 128 bit cpus. My guess is that this guy's job is to make sure that MS has input into the design process where it can, and to provide feedback to the MS dev teams so MS can start planning to include compatibility features relatively early on, to hopefully be the OS of choice when this hardware someday becomes available. I'm guessing that Windows 8 probably won't be seen for a long time. The article mentions 2012, but given MS's rush to push out 7 to stem the bleeding caused by Vista they may rely on it for longer than normal, much like they did with XP after the ME debacle. If I were writing an OS that would likely debut in 4 to 8 years, I would probably want a heads up from the hardware vendors about how to write an OS for their next gen proc. Also, if MS were planning a future move to a fully 128-bit OS, they might start by inserting 128-bit code into a 64-bit OS.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
None of the linked articles say that the 128 bits is for the filesystem only, but I still believe you're right:
Making the entire os 128-bit would simply waste a _lot_ of memory, for zero real gain. (Rather the opposite: A larger working set always leads to slower code.)
Having 128 bits available for filesystem/storage makes it quite feasible to have globally unique addresses for everything, across huge populations of machines.
This has been done before, afair IBM has used a 128 (or 129!) bit address space for their AS400 platform, where everything is memory mapped.
I.e. there is no visible file system, you just access objects by address (which is really a handle).
I believe Amazon's cloud storage is similar, in that the only way to access a blob of data is via a 128-bit handle.
Terje
Since Win8 / Win9 won't be out for 5/10 years...
Why am I getting flashbacks to a discussion that people had back in the 8 bit days?
"Making the entire os 32-bit would simply waste a _lot_ of memory, for zero real gain. (Rather the opposite: A larger working set always leads to slower code.) ... Having 32 bits available for filesystem/storage makes it quite feasible to have globally unique addresses for everything, across huge populations of machines."
I never heard this discussion, but you know it happened. Probably almost verbatim.
int128_t?
It blows my mind how few people use stdint.h when it makes a lot more sense to use that these days.
You just got troll'd!