TomTom ONE 130. Buy Now $149.95Next version of Windows to be 'fundamentally different'
CORONADO, Calif.--Future versions of Windows will have to be "fundamentally different" in order to take advantage of multicore processors, according to Ty Carlson of Microsoft.
"You're going to see in excess of 8, 16, 64 and beyond processors on your client computer," said Carlson, director of technical strategy at Microsoft, during a panel discussion at the Future in Review conference. Windows Vista, on the other hand, is "designed to run on 1, 2, maybe 4 processors," he said, referring to the fact that quad-core processors are now available from Intel and are on the way from Advanced Micro Devices.
The problem, as has been noted on many occasions, is that loads of PC applications were programmed with serial processing in mind, meaning that the performance of those applications increased as a chip's clock speed increased. That's not how it works anymore. The chip industy has decided that multiple cores are the best way to keep increasing performance, and that means applications now have to be designed with parallel processing in mind.
Intel and AMD have not confirmed processor plans beyond eight cores, and only in theory at that. Intel has demonstrated an 80-core processor, but that's just a research project that can't run conventional code. But Carlson appears convinced that he and other software developers should start getting ready for that world.
"In 10 to 15 years' time we're going to have incredible computing power. The challenge will be bringing that ecosystem up that knows how to write programs," Carlson said. Windows Vista is designed to take advantage of multiple processing threads, but not 16 threads. And application developers are even further behind in making the transition to the multicore world.
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Microsoft,
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Processors
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Windows Vista,
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multicore,
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Future in Review
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Given how long it took MS to bring Vista to the market how long will it be before it's "fundamentally different" replacement appears. It looks like Apple will be extending its technological lead...
longer than anticipated and ship without most of the new features
anyway.
IBM ported Linux to its Power platform that can use hundreds of CPUs, and released that code to the Linux community. IBM runs Linux on mainframes, minicomputers, and workstations that it designs and sells.
Faced with a level playing field, or a market that it doesn't monopolize, MS cannot compete. So it tries to extend its Windows monopoly into new fields. That's an understandable thing to do. It's just incredible that they can't or won't fix the problems of their OSes before starting new versions.
Compound TCP
The existing algorithms that prevent a sending TCP peer from overwhelming the
network are known as slow start and congestion avoidance. These algorithms
increase the amount of segments that the sender can send, known as the send
window, when initially sending data on the connection and when recovering from
a lost segment. Slow start increases the send window by one full TCP segment
for either each acknowledgement segment received (for TCP in Windows XP and
Windows Server 2003) or for each segment acknowledged (for TCP in Windows
Vista and Windows Server "Longhorn"). Congestion avoidance increases the send
window by one full TCP segment for each full window of data that is
acknowledged.
These algorithms work well for LAN media speeds and smaller TCP window sizes.
However, when you have a TCP connection with a large receive window size and a
large bandwidth-delay product (high bandwidth and high delay), such as
replicating data between two servers located across a high-speed WAN link with
a 100 ms round trip time, these algorithms do not increase the send window
fast enough to fully utilize the bandwidth of the connection. For example, on
a 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps) WAN link with a 100 ms round trip time (RTT), it
can take up to an hour for the send window to initially increase to the large
window size being advertised by the receiver and to recover when there are
lost segments.
To better utilize the bandwidth of TCP connections in these situations, the
Next Generation TCP/IP stack includes Compound TCP (CTCP). CTCP more
aggressively increases the send window for connections with large receive
window sizes and large bandwidth-delay products. CTCP attempts to maximize
throughput on these types of connections by monitoring delay variations and
losses. CTCP also ensures that its behavior does not negatively impact other
TCP connections.
In testing performed internally at Microsoft, large file backup times were
reduced by almost half for a 1 Gbps connection with a 50ms RTT. Connections
with a larger bandwidth delay product can have even better performance. CTCP
and Receive Window Auto-Tuning work together for increased link utilization
and can result in substantial performance gains for large bandwidth-delay
product connections.
CTCP is enabled by default in computers running beta versions of Windows
Server ?Longhorn? and disabled by default in computers running Windows Vista.
You can enable CTCP with the netsh interface tcp set global
congestionprovider=ctcp command. You can disable CTCP with the netsh interface
tcp set global congestionprovider=none command.
If you have a PC with multiple physical CPUs - that is, two or more chips installed on the motherboard - you'll need Windows Vista Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate to take advantage of both CPUs. If you install Vista Home Basic or Home Premium, the OS will only recognize one CPU. That's similar to the way Windows XP works today - if have a dual-CPU machine, you need to install XP Professional to use both CPUs.
So what about dual-core CPUs? That's different. All Vista versions, even the lowly Home Basic, support multiple cores on a single chip, with no additional configuration required.
system that facilitates software running on multiple processors and
multiple cores? It would probably issue, no problem!
been hearing that since windows 2.0 haven't seen a big change
yet.........
how many features will the next one have removed before it is
on shelves?
you know, MS always talks about how big a challenge the next
OS is, they drive expectations down, and then meet them.
funny the other 2 major OSes seem to have no trouble getting
things done.
DRM.
- Maybe 4?
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by diabulos
May 27, 2007 10:26 PM PDT
- He said; "Windows Vista, on the other hand, is "designed to run on 1, 2, maybe 4 processors,"
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See all 64 Comments >>what does he mean by 'maybe 4'? does that mean that Vista is sort of iffy running quads?