Windows 7 To Be 256-Core Aware 441
unassimilatible writes "As new features of Windows 7 continue to trickle out, ZDNet is now reporting that it will scale to 256 processors. While one has to wonder, like with Vista, how many of the teased features will actually make it into the final OS, I think we can all agree, 256 cores is enough for anybody." This Mark Russinovich interview has some technical details (Silverlight required).
Linux: 4096 (Score:5, Informative)
The most recent mainline Linux release has integrated mature patches for 4096 core scalability, that have been developed by high performance computing corporations and tested in the field for years. Previous versions were rated for "only" 1024 cores. That still makes 256 look like a Gameboy.
It must be really hard for Microsoft to compete in the HPC space. I almost feel bad for them. Almost.
Re:256 cores... pfft (Score:3, Informative)
Re:eh (Score:4, Informative)
Re:eh (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh, first off, it was 640kb of ram, and second off it's not even his quote. And additionally I'm not sure who really said it, but it wasn't Gates.
The 640kb wasn't meant in the long term it was meant at that point, a time when they were talking about how to divy up the limited ram. It was the sensible way to proceed, it's just that drivers and such didn't get loaded into the rest of the ram causing huge headaches for gaming.
Even at that point it was asinine to suggest that ram wouldn't become more common in machines. I think at that point they'd already seen ram increase by a few thousand percentage points easy if not more.
Re:Memory scaling (Score:5, Informative)
Linux supports NUMA which largely solves that problem, and ccNUMA which solves it even better. It's all about locality once again. Linux has been running on multi-thousand CPU machines for years, and has been optimised and refined by the stakeholders of those projects, so it's not a toy project to show off.
Re:Another excuse not to RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Opera browser and NO Silverlight here. That said there is no article to read but an interview to watch and the summary is wrong - it only requires Silverlight if you're using Internet Explorer. It streams video (.wmv) just fine to me.
Non-silverlight URL (Score:2, Informative)
Paste into VLC, mplayer etc: mms://mschnlnine.wmod.llnwd.net/a1809/d1/ch9/9/1/1/5/3/4/RussinovichInsideWindows7_s_ch9.wmv
You don't actually need silverlight (Score:4, Informative)
If you look more closely (just below the description section) there are download links for:
* iPod (MP4)
* MP3
* PSP (MP4)
* WMA
* WMV
* WMV (High)
* Zune
Re:256 cores... pfft (Score:5, Informative)
256 cores means that it can be stored in a 16-byte flag
Er... there are 128 bits in 16 bytes. HTH.
Re:Memory scaling (Score:5, Informative)
Re:eh (Score:5, Informative)
Except the architecture they chose was pretty much limited to 640, so i don't buy your argument.
Sure, soon afterwards ways around it was found, and eventually broken completely but it was a HARD limit at one point and i don't give Bill credit for seeing beyond his nose due to his 'self importance' attitude, which has burnt him more then once ( but with billions in the bank, its easy to buy your way out of a mistake ).
It was also marketing spin against the competing motorola chips ( and systems ) which could address more. "you really don't need that extra headroom, stick with microsoft'
Re:Linux: 4096 (Score:5, Informative)
Linux XP [linux-xp.com]
Re:eh (Score:5, Informative)
Supposedly it's an urban legend that he even said that, because no one on the internet can actually source the quote. And if the internet can't find it, then it probably doesn't exist. To sate those who want at least something, however, here is a relevant quote from 1989:
"I have to say that in 1981, making those decisions, I felt like I was providing enough freedom for 10 years. That is, a move from 64k to 640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time. Well, it didn't - it took about only 6 years before people started to see that as a real problem."
Re:Linux: 4096 (Score:5, Informative)
It won't take too long. Sun's T2 chip has 64 threads, and the T5440 that I have at the office has 4 chips in it, for 256 threads, all in a 4u chassis. Granted, it doesn't run windows, but seriously CMT chips are out and growing fast. BTW, the T2 cpu is only about an inch quare, and it's only done on 65nm tech, not even 40nm.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Calc, notepad, and pbrush (Score:3, Informative)
And even they suck when compared to open source/freeware alternatives such as Speedcrunch [speedcrunch.org], Notepad++ [sourceforge.net], and Paint.NET [getpaint.net].
Re:eh (Score:5, Informative)
I've read that it was an IBM engineer who said it. Could be another urban legend.
Anyway, Gates denied saying it: http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484 [wired.com] (Oldest link - it's from 1997 - that I could find.)
QUESTION: "I read in a newspaper that in l981 you said '640K of memory should be enough for anybody.' What did you mean when you said this?"
ANSWER: "I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time."
Gates goes on a bit about 16-bit computers and megabytes of logical address space, but the kid's question (will this boy never work at Microsoft?) clearly rankled the billionaire visionary.
"Meanwhile, I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again."
Re:Actually, maybe not fair (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention, giving out a laptop with known devices and hardware for a pre-beta built isn't exactly out of the ordinary. That way Microsoft can ensure that all the devices and drivers on that laptop are actually supported (remember: PRE-BETA). Not to mention the specs for those computers aren't exactly out of the ordinary now, and will be either standard or 'underpowered' two years from now when Windows 7 will be released.
But your point is moot anyway, since they've already given out installer discs, and people have installed it on a variety of hardware and still were impressed with the performance.
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Differing theory (Score:5, Informative)
You tell me that making OSes that crash every few hours and have to reboot all the time is part of a "mature industry"?
This is obviously your own personal problem for downloading malware or whatever. Just because you break your operating systems doesn't mean they aren't mature. My last reboot was several months ago (not due to a crash -- last crash was probably a year ago), and the last time I used Windows (2003) I actually found XP quite stable and not in need of any regular rebooting (except for security updates).
Re:No Silverlight here. (Score:3, Informative)
and Silverlight is different from Flash how? Actionscript is just as close to your computer as the CLR in silverlight is... the difference is that I can write apps in a nice language (c#) in silverlight.
The real reason for no headaches (Score:3, Informative)
"Seems like they learned from their mistakes with Vista, and now that they have a stable, solid kernel (whether you'd like to believe it or not), a lot of the headaches from Vista's development are simply not there."
The headaches from Vista's development were because they wasted 3 years trying to rewrite the kernel and had to scrap all of it and do a full reset...they had a (relatively) stable solid kernel the whole time...it's just that they didn't try to rewrite it this time around.
Re:No Silverlight here. (Score:4, Informative)
and Silverlight is different from Flash how?
Flash isn't interpreted by an interpreter that includes mechanisms to provide full local application privileges to downloaded code.
Silverlight is based on .NET, which has support for full native applications and uses a security model based on "security zones" that has proven extremely unreliable.
Re:Licensing (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft has been very good on that and while most other companies have been calling each core a separate processor Microsoft has not. Also with the latest round of products microsoft has been easing licenses with respect to failovers, with a decent amount of their products you can now setup a failover server and not be charged for the license cost and user licenses on the failover server.
Re:Twitter troll, mod down (Score:3, Informative)
n/t = no text
s/ONE/TWO is from the text editor vi (and now vim). It's one way to replace text with other text when in escape mode. vim is a popular text editor.
^H is a backspace control sequence.
Most of the long acronyms can be typed directly into the wickedpedias as they have pages (or at least redirects).
HTH (Hope This Helps)
Fair enough (Score:3, Informative)
.
Entry level for a 64 Bit Vista laptop with a 2 GHz Intel dual core CPU and 4 GB RAM is $812 at Walmart.com: Laptops-4 GB RAM [walmart.com]
Walmart.com lists 25 dual-core laptops with 4 GB of RAM.
18 run 64 Bit Vista.
It's become trivially easy to meet Vista's hardware requirements as a mass market price.
64 Bit Vista is mainstream today.
The day after tomorrow, the quad core CPU will be everywhere, the Blu-Ray drive will be a burner, and systems sporting 8 GB RAM will scarcely seem unusual.
Re:Linux: 4096 (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, i think you're confusing cores with nodes. NUMA is multi-processor architecture, and I believe the Linux kernel can support up to 4096 NUMA nodes (that is NUMA processors). Theoretically, those processors could also be multi-core.
My understanding is that 256 is the largest number of cores Intel and AMD have "defined" for the architecture, so I don't see how any OS could claim support for more than 256 cores.
Re:Differing theory (Score:4, Informative)
Lets see why Vista was a train wreck: A) It ran pathetically slow B) It renamed things for no apparent reasons and C) It had too much DRM and other crap. I think that anyone could have told you that it wouldn't go over too well. It wasn't because of things developed that "wouldn't go over well in the marketplace" it was the idiot Ballmer trying to push his agenda that is killing MS over developing decent software.
a) What are you running it on? A P-133? If you'll remember, XP was pretty damned slow when it first came out. Slower, in fact, than Vista (comparatively speaking)
b) Like what? Are you talking about the "My Documents" to "Documents" transition? Like how XP moved your docs folder from C:\My Documents to %user%\ ?
c) Did you really expect Microsoft to not include DRM in Vista? They're in a pretty hard place; they have to bow to multiple governments demands as to what they can and cannot include in their OS. Not only that, but they'd get their arses sued off by the media companies, who would then release their own DRM stuff that would only bog Windows down even more.
Funnily enough, it's only Microsoft that's at the mercy of these organisations... I don't see Apple getting yelled at for including iChat, iMovie, iLife, Quicktime, GarageBand and iTunes with their OS. I also don't see nearly as many users bitching about the actual restrictive DRM in their OS as there are about the unintrusive (WGA notwithstanding) DRM in Vista.
Now, there's MS bashing, and there's MS bashing. I am personally sick of seeing "waaa Vista sucks" posts all over the internet. Did you know that you pay more per chip in a bag of potato chips than you do per megabyte of RAM these days?
Think about that. Suck it up and buy some more RAM and enjoy Vista the way it was supposed to be used - XP ran like shit on less than 64MB of RAM, so why is Vista bashed for having the same comparative requirements?
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Informative)
The Vista DVD pretty much does that. It contains the files for all 5 versions and the key you enter when you install determines which version of Vista will be configured. So you can install Vista Ultimate from the Vista Home DVD, if you use an Ultimate key. This also allows you to perform the "anytime upgrade" to a higher version if you buy it.
The server components are not present however because Windows Server is configured a lot differently. For example, Windows XP is version 5.1 and Windows Server 2003 is version 5.2. Although they contain many of the same features their configuration is a lot different (ie. Windows server has no themes service or system restore and is set to prioritize background processes over foreground). Some people [msfn.org] have configured Windows Server as a workstation but there are a lot of steps involved just to get it to XP style functionality. The kernel and services are also different to optimize the system for serving or workstation tasks.
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Enough? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No Silverlight here. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)
That's marketing bullshit.
I'm one of the people who runs Windows 2008 Server on a laptop, and I can tell you now, it's Vista with a higher retail price-tag.
Microsoft has been releasing server builds that are virtually identical to the desktop editions for years now. Windows XP 64-bit uses Windows 2003 service packs. Windows 2008 uses Vista drivers, the server editions have the DirectX gaming APIs, the workstation editions can serve file and web pages, etc...
The only difference in server is different initial default settings, some additional modules (such as Active Directory), and a half-dozen tuning parameters, most which are set through the registry anyway.
Even Active Directory will run on a desktop OS! It's called Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM).