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Why Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Zen Will Only Be Optimized On Windows 10 (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: There was quite a stir caused recently when it was determined that Microsoft would only be fully supporting Intel's Kaby Lake and AMD's Zen next-generation processor microarchitectures with Windows 10. It's easy to dismiss the decision as pure marketing move, but there's more to consider and a distinction to be made between support and compatibility. The decision means future updates and optimizations that take advantage of the latest architectural enhancements in these new processors won't be made for older OS versions. Both of these microarchitectures have new features that require significant updates to Windows 10 to optimally function. Kaby Lake has updates to Intel's Speed Shift technology that make it possible to change power states more quickly than Skylake, for example. Then there's Intel's Turbo Boost 3.0, which is only baked natively into Windows 10 Redstone 1. For an operating system to optimally support AMD's Zen-based processors, major updates are likely necessary as well. Zen has fine-grained clock gating with multi-level regions throughout the chip, in addition to newer Simultaneous Multi-Threading technology for AMD chips. To properly leverage the tech in Zen, Microsoft will likely have to make updates to the Windows kernel and system scheduler, which is more involved than a driver update. Of course, older versions of Windows and alternative operating systems will still install and run on Kaby Lake and Zen. They are x86 processors, after all.
Skylake graphics is an issue. I had to use a 4.6 kernel on Ubuntu 16.04. The 4.4 kernel which ships with 16.04 had issues on my notebook. Good news is I can switch between integrated graphics and nvidia now.
Not the first time - Microsoft only fully supported the Pentium Pro, Pentium II and descendants on their server line of software.
Windows XP was stuck on 4GB even when the hardware could support more in MS Server 2003, linux and all the rest.
Annoying as fuck, a step backwards and one reason a Win2k machine in my workplace (two sockets and 6GB) was kept on Win2k for well over a decade.
For those without a clue who want to challenge this, at least look up PAE so you don't look so stupid when you do so.
It is as simple as this: These new CPUs have integrated GPUs. I do believe these GPUs are fully DirectX 12 compatible. DX 12 only works on Windows 10, while Windows 7 supports DX 11. This is most likely the majority of the "support" and "optimizations" in Windows 10 for these new CPUs. The GPUs will still operate win DX 11 mode, just with a few new features disabled.
No disrespect intended to MojoKid, but this story about Microsoft being unable to optimize pre-Windows 10 Operating Systems for older processors is outright nonsense.
I've been working with the "Windows NT" family of operating systems [i.e. the codebase that Microsoft developed after they grabbed all the VMS OS Programmers from Digital] since NT3.51. Since that OS release, as this Microsoft Knowledgebase article shows https://support.microsoft.com/... Microsoft's 32-bit [and now 64-bit] Windows offerings included a proper Hardware Abstraction Layer. In other words, it is possible for Microsoft to replace the HAL for Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 with one that is entirely compatible with these latest Intel and AMD chips. In fact, this story is almost laughable, given that the HAL was designed and conceived specifically to allow for seamless transition between successive generations of processor platform.
For example, Microsoft Windows NT 3.51 actually introduced support for the PowerPC processor [the Motorola/IBM design that evolved into the CUBE processors that are found inside PS/3s]. In order for Microsoft to be able to support NT3.51 on two hugely different processor architectures, they needed a way of maintaining a very complex codebase easily. The HAL was the answer. By abstracting away the details of the low-level hardware and having the basics of the OS "Windows Services" call an internal API, Microsoft made it possible to maintain a single block of source code [above this watermark] that was then compiled down onto each architecture. This is the whole point of abstraction layers.
This is an old Microsoft trick, previously used to great effect with the "DirectX" scam, in which Microsoft would wait for a new generation of GPUs, then introduce a new edition of DirectX to take account of the enhanced functionality of the GPU silicon, only to not back-port that DirectX release to older OS versions [thereby forcing gamers to upgrade]. Over the last few years the gaming market has shifted away from PCs and on to either consoles or portable devices [tablets and phones], so there is less demand for gaming on PCs: consequently, Microsoft needed a new incentive to force OS upgrades - and this is it.
Microsoft would love for you to forget about the HAL. The problem is that the world has moved on. 10, 15 years ago, the Wintel hegemony relied upon new Windows features to drive the latest generation of hardware sales. All that is now upside down. People don't care about the OS; they are using portable or cloud applications anyway, so now the "wow factor" is driven by the latest generation of hardware - see what effect new Apple product has. Microsoft have learned from this, so now they are using new processors as pull-through to forcibly migrate users on to Windows 10, to try and discourage them from porting their retail license copies of Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 onto latest-generation hardware.
It's perfectly OK for Microsoft to do this. It's their code. They can do what they want. I'm not going to rail against them for making a decision that they have a perfect right to make.
What I most definitely DO object to is the deployment of specious half-truths as justification.