Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Bites It On 64-bit Microprocessors
Lots of readers pointed us to this Microsoft.com page that says MS has stopped trying to make NT run on 64-bit Alphas and isn't even going to release any new 32-bit Alpha products. For more info on the subject, check this Netcape Netcenter article and the Ixnay WinNT on Alphastory we ran last Friday. Meanwhile, according to a short blurb in The Register, Intel has finally prototyped Merced in silicon - and it runs Linux fine but won't run Win64 at all. It looks like Microsoft simply can't deal with 64-bit architecture. Please try not to say "I told you so" too loudly to your MS-boosting coworkers, okay? ;-)
Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 386
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.11
Windows for Workgroups
Windows 95
Windows 95A
Windows 95B
Windows 95 OSR 2
Windows 95 OSR 2.1
Windows 95 OSR 2.5
Windows 98 (8 versions, currently)
Windows NT 3.1
Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server
Windows NT 3.51 Workstation
Windoes NT 3.51 Server
Windows NT 4.0 Workstation
Windows NT 4.0 Server
Windows NT 4.0 Server Enterprise Edition
(Not to mention all the service packs for the above...)
I'm sure I missed some. Does anybody have a canonical list of all the versions of Windows?
In the press on this topic, Compaq was quoted as saying that only 5% of their Alphas went out as NT systems.
Actually, the figure I saw was 2%.
Furthermore, MS is still using Alpha as the development system for 64-bit W2k; they just apparently won't be polishing it, marketing it, etc.
Now, this seems pretty darn stupid of Compaq to me to discontinue plans to market 64-bit NT. Yeah, yeah, 2%--why bother, right? Thing is, that 2% refers to running a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit CPU. If you were going to the expense of buying an Alpha, why hinder it with an OS that doesn't take advantage of its architecture? Hence the 2% figure makes a lot of sense.
But now that Intel is coming out with a 64-bit chip, well, Microsoft decides that's important enough to warrant a 64-bit OS...and this is the time Compaq chooses to pull the plug on Alpha NT?? Huh???
Especially since, according to all reports, by the time Merced is finally released (Q2 next year? Q3??), the Alpha's going to be walloping it. By the middle of next year, the roadmaps I've seen have the 21264's hitting well over a GHz...I think I've even seen 1.4 tossed around (but it was prolly at The Register, so, grain of salt). More importantly, benchmark roadmaps (these, I remember, were leaked from Compaq, so more salt) have a 1GHz Alpha beating an 800MHz Merced by ~40-50% (SPECint, IIRC).
So what's up???
Two theories. Wait, make that three (er, four):
1. Compaq's stated reason: they want to revitalize Tru64, and support Linux. Plus, no demand for NT Alpha. Possible...but I dunno. Tru64 seems to be a losing battle as a long term strategy; it's faster than Linux on Alphas now, but a few years down the road?? Seems smarter to go the sgi route, let your proprietary UNIX die, and let Linux sell your boxes. As for the lack of demand for 32-bit Alpha, see above. I think once it was 64-bit, people would buy. An appropriately high end Alpha box'd kick the hell out of an 8-way Xeon box on NT, and prolly a 16-Athlon as well.
2. Merced NT doesn't have much in common with Alpha NT, so MS doesn't want to spend time on it. Here, I pretty much have little idea what I'm talking about, but it would make sense to me if programming for a VLIW chip is just too different from programming for anything else. Cause VLIW is waaay different--far more different from existing architectures than CISC is from RISC, at least the way "CISC" and "RISC" chips are made these days. So perhaps the whole, "we're making a 64-bit OS anyways, why not port to Alpha?" idea doesn't actually work. On the other hand, most VLIW issues seem to occur in the compiler...and they're still using Alpha as the development chip for 64-bit W2k. So...
3. Maybe Merced'll be faster than we thought. This is my conspiracy theory of the day, and you have to understand that I've been pretty disappointed by Intel tech lately, so it's taking quite a bit for me to say this. But still...I mean, even if they didn't count on selling many Alphas for NT, don't you think Compaq would love to be able to claim how their much cheaper (and they will be) Alphas kicked the tar out of those new Merceds in a fair fight with the same OS?? (Note: yeah, it wouldn't actually be fair...but it'd sure look that way.) So either Compaq got wind of the fact that Merced won't be slower after all...or perhaps they realized MS wouldn't do what it takes to make the 64-bit Alpha W2k compete with the Merced W2k...or perhaps...
4! Intel paid 'em off!! Ok, this is too fun to pass up. Essentially this goes like, Intel's just spent, what, 3 or 4 years now on a laughingstock of an overpriced chip (yes, I have no doubt that eventually IA64 will be amazing...but not on Merced), and they desperately want to avoid any controlled comparisons. So they politely ask Compaq and MS to stop development on 64-bit NT for Alpha. Besides, Compaq'll be selling their share of Merced boxes, so they've got as much to lose as anyone.
Pretty spooky, huh!!
The idea that they could take Windows 2000 (or any other version of Windows) and simply compile it to work on the 64-bit Alpha, or Merced processors was always going to be a joke.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What happened to "NT is extremely portable." In theory, the only hardware specific component is supposed to be HAL.DLL. The rest of the NT code base is supposed to be highly portable C code. By replacing HAL.DLL and recompiling the rest of the system, it was supposed to be possible to port NT to whatever in a matter of weeks. Why did compaq need an NT development team in the first place? Why did NT powerPC collapse when IBM withdrew funding? I refuse to believe that MS doesn't know how to write architecture neutral code - that's just too far fetched. I'm thinking that it's due to lightning storms.
--Shoeboy
The way Microsoft phrase it, it's all Compaq's fault for "terminating Alpha support for current versions of Windows NT". As if Microsoft were helpless in front of Compaq's refusal to let them port their operating system!
Linux, as everyone here knows, ran on Alpha machines (as well as x86 and 68000) long before it could get acknowledgement of its existence from the processor manufacturers, let alone substantial help in making it happen. It was done in the usual way: get the specs of the hardware, and code to them. What is it that's so difficult about this process that Microsoft needs Compaq to hold its hand before it can think about it?
Microsoft don't expect ever to have to act like a software firm. You don't write code for other people's hardware - you graciously allow the hardware manufacturer to write code for you. Compaq have started to smell the independence from this kind of treatment that Linux gives them, and soon Microsoft will find out what that means for them.
Revenge is gonna be so sweet.
--
Xenu loves you!
The NT concept of a hardware abstraction layer that marshalled calls to the underlying system was fundamental in making NT stable. This is why NT3.51 was very stable. However, it also made many things slow, most noticably the grraphics side of things. With NT the GUI is not optional, so this poor performance was always noticable. To improve performance, graphics operations were allowed to bypass the HAL in NT4.0. This is why NT4.0 outperforms NT3.51, but is very unstable.
I don't know whether any other userland stuff was allowed direct hardware access, as I quit using NT after 3.51.
Chris Wareham
Yes, on alpha it's been fully 64bit for a long time now. On UltraSPARC the kernel runs at 64bit but the apps still run at 32bit. So the support for 64bit has been there for a long time. I'm assuming the ia64 port is 64bit atleast for the kernel. I remeber reading something from Linus a while ago where he was saying that because the ia64 binaries are probally going to be so large it would be faster to run 32bit x86 binaries most of the time than to run ia64 binaries. The exception being binaries that need access to huge ammounts of memory, such as large databases.
-matt
What I can't understand is why Compaq can't get behind the Alpha and drive it home. It's superior over Intel architecture. Compaq could say "Screw you, M$ AND Intel" and have Alphas on every desktop. Get someone like the people who make VMWare to get Win9* to run on Alpha and start packaging RedHat on Alpha machines. Hell, they bought Digital and Tandem. If they knew how to integrate this vast wealth of knowledge together, they could kick ass, but apparently someone at Compaq just doesn't want to do it.
:-)
M$ will get NT working on 64 bits, but obviously they've got egg on their face. So much for portability. This is certainly going to drain resources. How many versions of Windows will M$ be supporting now ?
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
BTW, what happened to all the Astroturfers that were posting yesterday about how the Compaq decision was of little importance, because 64-bit NT Alpha development was going strong?
Whaddya think, everyone? Exit Cutler? Or is Merced going to keep him happy?
--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
I'm no NT expert, but this is confused.
What happened is that up to NT 3.51 inclusive, the Win32 subsystem was a completely separate process, as were the OS/2 and POSIX subsystems. In NT4, the Win32 subsystem was migrated into the kernel (in Linux speak; in NT it's the Executive, the Kernel is a very low level layer just above the HAL). There are rumours that this was resisted by key people on the NT team, but there was a strong push to improve GUI performance; there are also rumours that this is the reason for NT4 being less stable than NT 3.5x.
Certainly I never had a crash on NT 3.5x and have had many on NT4, but YMMV. On some configurations, NT does not really crash much (e.g. my Linux workstation on top of VMware!).
As for the HAL originally hiding all hardware - this is not true, otherwise why would device drivers be necessary? I think the HAL abstracts basic resources such as CPU, memory, bus, etc, but many other resources require drivers.
I'm not hugely surprised by Linux doing better on IA-64, since Linux has been 64-bit for some time and has worked out a lot of generic 64-bitness bugs, whereas Win64 is still alpha.
And what would be thy problem with the horse-drawn cart, Englishman? It is not a tool of the Devil, like the forsaken-by-God products of Microsoft!
dictated to me by an Amish moderator
1. Compaq is probably not selling enough Tru64 or Linux systems to justify continued Alpha production. If Compaq was making lots of money, they might make some sort of daring move to push Unix/Linux on their systems. But since they're trying to cut costs they'll have to drop the Alpha.
2. Microsoft could easily continue Alpha development. Windows on Alpha is of strategic importance when dealing with Intel, so MS is shooting themselves in the foot by letting it die.
3. Microsoft isn't stupid. They're quite aware of points 1 & 2.
Conclusion: Compaq must have done something to really piss off Microsoft. Maybe those NT engineers Compaq layed off were really important to Microsoft for some reason. Perhaps Compaq is about to make some sort of big Linux announcement. Maybe Compaq pulled out of a product tying deal. Who knows. Whatever it was, Microsoft now feels that it must retaliate against Compaq even though it will hurt Microsoft on another front.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Also, VMware isn't going to help Win95 run on alpha -- it relies on having a native CPU.
--
Yeah, they are falling apart:
That isn't what I said, exactly. While Microsoft is rolling in cash, it is primarily due to their control of OS preloads of Windows 98 and sales of Office. NT isn't responsible for their huge profits because it not only hasn't sold in huge quantities, it has cost them huge amounts in development and advertising. NT has failed to light a fire under the industry. It slowed, but failed to kill Novell. Novell looks resurgeant. It has failed to kill UNIX. UNIX growth continues. It has failed to slow acceptance of Linux. Linux is growing at a much faster rate than NT, despite the huge inequity of resources spent on promotion of NT versus that spent on promotion of Linux. Heck, NT has failed to even completely kill oS/2, despite IBM's best efforts at helping them out there.
Lets get some realism here....
The reality is that a lot of once large and once prosperous companies that relied on their own proprietary OSes have seen those products dry up and either ended up dead (like Prime (PrimeOS) for example), becoming a UNIX vendor (like HP (MPE), DEC (VMS), etc) or basically exiting the hardware/OS business altogether (Unisys).
Its easy to predict the status quo when a company is prosperous, but that can turn around quickly. If you had told people in 1980 that Digital Research would be a tiny, forgotten subsidiary of a company whos major product was a distribution of a free UNIX clone, they would have told you that you were insane.