Windows 7 Scalable Enough To Support 256 Cores

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Though obviously Microsoft has taken a fair amount of heat regarding Windows Vista, there's probably a directly proportional level of hype on their next mainstream OS, Windows 7. Projected by some to be the OS that Vista should have been, and still by others to be nothing more than Vista on steroids (perhaps just a six-pack of Red Bull, depending on who you talk to); there's plenty of rumor, gossip, leaked and public information to go around to keep your mind off your troubled Vista installation that just crashed again for the eleventh time today. However, when it comes to unreleased OS information, we like to spend our bandwidth listening to trusted sources close to the development of the product, rather than buzz around in hear-say land.

That said, a good source you might want to consider for your dose of Windows 7 juice could very well be Microsoft's Channel 9 site, a Microsoft developer outreach site and member community staffed by several Microsoft employees. As an example, recently one of Microsoft's Technical Engineering Fellows in their Core OS division gave an interview regarding some new enhancements coming to the Windows 7 kernel. The long and short of it is that Windows 7 will be up to 256-core aware and capable of that level of multithreading. Think that's enough? It should be for a while anyway. Give a listen to Microsoft's Mark Russinovich, if you really want to put your thinking cap on...

Mark Russinovich: Inside Windows 7

One very important change in Windows 7 kernel is the dismantling of the Dispatcher Spin Lock and redesign and implementation of its functionality into separate components. This work was done by Arun Kishan (you've met him here on C9 last year). The direct result of this great work is that Windows 7 can scale to 256 processors and enabled the great Landy Wang to tune Windows Memory manager to be even more efficient than it already is.

Now the question is, will these new kernel enhancements actually make it into the OS? With the way things are scaling with mutli-core processors these days (and their relative importance to MS... Larabee anyone?), we'd say the chances are pretty good this one will see the light of day.

Source

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256 first let me get a quad then i'll think about it....!

Thinks like M$ doesn't want to develop Vista any more.
Now all over it's WIN 7, What about Vista? Have they lost faith over it?

And 256 cores, let people first get 2 or 4 cores, then only they can think about 256.

256 cores ? The world's fastest supercomputers with thousands of cores (and CPUs) run linux. So what ? Big deal. To 99.9999% of the users, it means nothing at all. The max you need to support in the next 8 years is 16 cores and thats a fact.

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We dont need this 256 core thing right now.......

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Yawn! Guess Windows 7 is the most hyped Windows release. There are much more scalable OSes out there. And as others said it really doesn't matter.

Ask them first fix their security layer beyond just informing the user "Program X is running. Do you want to allow?" when any program (good or bad) runs, beyond that if system is affected all they can do is blame the user for allowing it.

Users will continue to hit enter if some pop-up always appear whenever they do something (good or bad). Do all of us really read and think before hitting "Yes" after a "Shift + Delete"?

amritpal2489 said:
We dont need this 256 core thing right now.......

Especialluy when we r still struggling wid jus 4 cores

256 ??

man thats enormous.....

abhi tak 64 cores ki baat chal rahi hai, aur yaha 256 lolz

BTW 64 cores>>Larrabee

^^But i think they are GPU-cores right? Just like SPs in graphics cards..

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Just for info, thought 64 core is not exactly there, there are super powerful processors from Sun which have 64 hardware thread (Ultrasparc T2)/

^^There's a processor which was developed by Intel in B'lore which has 80 cores.. They plan to release such processors within the next 5 years..

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Ultrasparc T2 is out there in the market running on production servers unlike Intel's which is yet to come out. Anyway no CPU flaming here.

^^The UltraSparcT2 has 8 cores.. And google says it cots $40000 :shock:

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As I already pointed out it is not 64 cores but it has 64 hardware threads viz 8 hardware threads per core. Which basically means it can process 64 concurrent instructions.

Looks like M$ wants to release Dx11 with WS 7 as the released Dx10 with vista.
So my guess Dx11 will be mind boilingggg. WOOOOOOOW!!!!
So it may recommend 256 cores.

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Dx11 and scalability of OS, how do they relate?

^^Exactly.. And i dont know whats so 'wooooow' about it.. DX10 failed to impress many people.. Let games implement DX10 and DX10.1(is it out?) completely.. Then we can think about DX11 and what it has to offer..

Hmm... talking about cores, Sun OpenSPARC T2 costs 750$. Definitely much more VFM than Xeons and Optrons.

nvidia said:
.. DX10 failed to impress many people.. Let games implement DX10 and DX10.1(is it out?) completely.. Then we can think about DX11 and what it has to offer..

yup

256 cores

chandru.in said:
Yawn! Guess Windows 7 is the most hyped Windows release. There are much more scalable OSes out there. And as others said it really doesn't matter.

Ask them first fix their security layer beyond just informing the user "Program X is running. Do you want to allow?" when any program (good or bad) runs, beyond that if system is affected all they can do is blame the user for allowing it.

Users will continue to hit enter if some pop-up always appear whenever they do something (good or bad). Do all of us really read and think before hitting "Yes" after a "Shift + Delete"?

No software vendor can take charge for users stupidity. There are people who don't read it and for them these prompts are just another pop ups. But this is there for people who read.

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casanova said:
No software vendor can take charge for users stupidity. There are people who don't read it and for them these prompts are just another pop ups. But this is there for people who read.

But just showing a pop-up for something as critical as malicious program execution from USB key is ridiculous. The OS has to be re-designed to minimize the effect of any such malicious executions and if at all one occurs it shouldn't need an OS re-install to fix. In Vista for default user, once the user allows (by muscle memory), the app gets full admin access to entire system.

^^Pardon Sir, but is this not the case with Linux? If i run an app with root privileges, wont it be able to do anything it likes?

chandru.in said:
But just showing a pop-up for something as critical as malicious program execution from USB key is ridiculous. The OS has to be re-designed to minimize the effect of any such malicious executions and if at all one occurs it shouldn't need an OS re-install to fix. In Vista for default user, once the user allows (by muscle memory), the app gets full admin access to entire system.

chandru.in said:
Ask them first fix their security layer beyond just informing the user "Program X is running. Do you want to allow?" when any program (good or bad) runs, beyond that if system is affected all they can do is blame the user for allowing it.

Users will continue to hit enter if some pop-up always appear whenever they do something (good or bad). Do all of us really read and think before hitting "Yes" after a "Shift + Delete"?

FYI, already taken care of. If something is not posted here, doesn't mean it has not happened.

chandru.in said:
Yawn! Guess Windows 7 is the most hyped Windows release. There are much more scalable OSes out there. And as others said it really doesn't matter.

LOL! If they do something, it doesn't matter, but there are other OSs that do it. And just 'coz you say it doesn't matter, we are supposed to accept it and start saying why is Windows 7 scalable to 256 cores, hey Sinofsky, some chandru.in said it doesn't matter why are doing it then?

PS: Had been trying to avoid your bullsh!t in this and other threads, but what the hell!

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Krazy_About_Technology said:
^^Pardon Sir, but is this not the case with Linux?

No it is not. Say I have logged in with the default user created during OS installation. Now a random file is on USB key and tries to execute. Linux will run it as normal user without any admin rights. Unless I prefix it intentionally with sudo or su -c or gksudo it is given no root privileges. If I don't, the executable can very well be run with normal privileges.

Now if the same happens in Vista, it gives a simple prompt, which user would anyway be trained to allow (coz any new exe when tried to run in Vista will prompt you). The moment he clicks allow it goes into admin mode and can destroy any part of system. Also there is no way the executable can just run with normal privileges. It is either full privilege or no execution.

Anyway this thread is about scalability and let's stop security discussion here lest the thread gets locked up.

iMav said:
LOL! If they do something, it doesn't matter, but there are other OSs that do it. And just 'coz you say it doesn't matter, we are supposed to accept it and start saying why is Windows 7 scalable to 256 cores, hey Sinofsky, some chandru.in said it doesn't matter why are doing it then?

Let them do it. I don't hate if Windows improves. But the hype is just too much than it deserves.

chandru.in said:
any new exe when tried to run in Vista will prompt you

No, wrong. Only unsigned Exe will give a UAC Prompt.

Also there is no way the executable can just run with normal privileges.

Ahm!!! what????

chandru.in said:
Let them do it. I don't hate if Windows improves. But the hype is just too much than it deserves.

And WHY would it not be? Its the most popular and loved consumer OS..

Talking about linux supporting 1000's of cores in mainframes is useless. Windows is a typical consumer OS, its meant to be like that; and it'll remain that way. And regarding Windows 7; it could be scalable compared to Vista; thats what the thread means. :neutral:

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gxsaurav said:
No, wrong. Only unsigned Exe will give a UAC Prompt.

Ahm!!! what????

I'm refraining from going into security from scalability though I can explain.

chandru.in said:
Let them do it. I don't hate if Windows improves. But the hype is just too much than it deserves.

So let's see, just so that I'm clear ... you don't like the hype that Microsoft gets and you're fine with giving it importance? LOL!

Hype is good. Its amusing, whether the product is good or bad thats a secondary issue.