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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.
stll not upgradng to it , f U
I can think of two other operating systems, other than Windows 10, that will "Optimize" Kaby Lake processors, but I'll leave it as an exercise for the student to figure out which ones they are.
just a ghost in the machine.
After all, while Win10 will have those performance improvements, they will most likely be negated by all the spyware bullshit installed by the integrated adware/data mining system.
Well Linux started supporting the new CPU features six months ago. Probably earlier inside Intel - when you're wanting to test your new CPU features before you release the CPU, you can either wait for Microsoft to use them in Windows, or do it yourself in Linux.
I know that was done with x64, AMD ported Linux's existing 64 bit support, then a few years later Microsoft released 64 bit Windows.
Can we phrase this the other way that doesn't make Microsoft look good? Just say Windows 8.1 and older will not get updates for Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Zen.
We expect most modern OSes to do these kinds of upgrades. Only calling out Windows 10 makes it seem like these are somehow special windows features, when they are nothing of the sort. Linux already has patches available for Intel's Turbo Boost 3.0, and that's just the first example I searched for.
"Why Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Zen Will Only Be Optimized On Windows 10 "
that is misleadingly worded.
correctly speaking m$ will only optimize windows 10 for these processors. they can optimize their older os to these, if they want to, but will not due to costs, etc.
similarly any other os can optimize for these processors, if they want to. there is no prohibition for doing that.
why editors at /. want to word this only from m$ pov leading to misleading readings(in at least 2 summaries dealing with this issue) is puzzling.
When I hear or see the word "turbo", my first thought is of this Far Side cartoon.
#DeleteChrome
This is just plain wrong. You could very easily make an OS that uses a whitelist of CPUID responses and PCI probe responses and refuses to install/boot on anything else. CPUs provide features for detecting/identifying generations, it would be easy enough to abuse this to make an OS refuse to install/boot on a chip that was released after it.
I'm not saying any mainstream OS does this, just that it's by no means impossible, and pretending that it's impossible just makes you look uninformed/ignorant.
Intel and AMD have said that in light of the Microsoft decision not to support the new CPUs on older versions of Windows that they have no plans to release drivers for the new CPUs and chipsets for the older operating systems.
Are you willing to pay for it? Can you convince another million users to do so? if not, why should they add new features to an 8 year old OS? What were you doing 8 years ago and are you willing to stop what you are doing now and spend the next year supporting it for no gain?
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That you object to the english words for a technical term doesn't mean the technical term doesn't have some meaning.
Learn to love Alaska
Last time I checked chipset drivers for Intel are maintained by Intel them self. Only relevant M$ driver I can think of that would be affected is the ACPI. So pretty much all the work and cost supporting Windows 7 would be done by Intel.
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.
I know, the header is needlessly gloomy, but haven't we, some time ago, reached the point where advances in HW are no longer all that interesting? There were major excitements when we went from 8 to 16 bit, 32 bits 64 bits; and with the introduction of protected memory (which made pre-emptive multitasking workable) and virtualisation. It's been long since I thought a new CPU feature would be worth upgrading for - it would be great to have more cores and RAM, but it can wait. And while quantum computing, graphene and carbon nanotubes are promising technologies that may boost the speed to incredible heights, I probably wouldn't even notice the difference between a response time of a millisecond and a nanosecond. Yeah, some things would be snappier, but as a consumer, it won't matter enough for me to really care.
The same goes for SW - I haven't seen anything for almost a decade, that I thought I must have. I have all the tools I need and more: editors, compilers, databases engines galore, office packages, several classes of graphics editors (bitmap, vector, ray tracing, ..), I can design fonts that stretch all the way to the far end of Unicode and so on. Of course, because I use Linux, I have all of these things on any HW I am ever likely to encounter (and where they are relevant; I don't at the moment foresee a need for running Oracle or Glassfish on a mobile).
I guess the big question here is - from a consumer's point of view, have we reached the point where a computer is just a computer; an appliance, like a toaster, where they may look different and you may choose one look over another, but actually they just do the same basic thing?
Why would OSX need to support new Intel processors?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
This absolutely seems to be a Microsoft-Intel marketing position making, after people were annoyed at their monopolistic move announced a few days ago. Mic cannot sell their new OS's if gamers don't have to so they need to make them or others need to. We really don't care unless Intel and AMD takes Microsoft position and don't let other OS's access the new features. And since there is even more money on the other side (Apple>>Microsoft), I dont believe it can happen even if they originally intend to.
I know you're being funny because Apple's current product lineup looks like something unearthed from an ancient Sumerian ziggurat at this point, but I have a feeling they aren't quite done with Mac yet, and their A-series SoCs can't get anywhere close to the performance of even the lowest wattage CPU in Intel's x64 products.
Apple might be one of the first large OEMs to ship kaby lake - maybe that's why they took a pass on the current chips?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Back in '03, it was quite a rough time for the site. There had been a lot of navel-gazing after the "Great Summer War": what are we here for? what is the site all about? Microsoft astro-turfing became the focal point because we needed a banner to rally around. Something to make people feel good inside. Nobody can say that they don't feel superior after reading that shit - and you have to remember that a lot of the people who come here don't have a lot else going on in their lives. They need that lift.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
It's funny because it's TRUE!
just a ghost in the machine.