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? ;-)
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
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
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