Vista's Multi-processor capablities

[MaskedAvenger]

For XP it is two, with XP Pro be amble to handle at least four.
How many cores can the Vista varities handle?
Once the Q6600 falls in price, I'm going to add a Q6600 setup to my (mike9o's) Folding fleet and want to have the right version of Vista ready.
Thanks for your help!

 

[Nothinman]

I believe the amount of cores is currently unlimited, it's the number of sockets that MS has artificially limited. It seems that XP (not sure about Vista) is limited to 32 and 64 cores in the 32-bit and 64-bit versions respectively though.

http://www.microsoft.com/licen...hlights/multicore.mspx

 

[RebateMonger]

As Nothingman notes, all Microsoft OSes are licensed based on PHYSICAL CPU sockets filled, not on cores.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Which, sadly, means that XP Home doesn't really run well on those old SMP P3 VP6 mobos. My friend found that out the hard way after transferring an OS install over and installing that old mobo.

 

[Nothinman]

Which, sadly, means that XP Home doesn't really run well on those old SMP P3 VP6 mobos.

It'll run just fine, although you only get to use one of the CPUs.

My friend found that out the hard way after transferring an OS install over and installing that old mobo.

Guess he should have looked at the limitations of the OS more carefully, it's not like this is a recent change or something.

 

[MaskedAvenger]

So a quad core will run fine under Vista Basic. Thanks! 😀

 

[Nothinman]

So a quad core will run fine under Vista Basic. Thanks!

Everything up to 32 or 64 cores will be fine depending on which version of Vista you've got.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Everything up to 32 or 64 cores will be fine depending on which version of Vista you've got.

Optimist. 😀

 

[Nothinman]

Optimist.

Well I don't know how well the NT scheduler actually scales but MS' documentation says that's what's supported. And if they switched away from using an int to hold the CPU bitmask in Vista it may be higher now, the page I saw was for XP.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wake me up when Intel is selling 32-core desktop cpus. I want to do some scheduler benchmarking.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Wake me up when Intel is selling 32-core desktop cpus. I want to do some scheduler benchmarking.

We will be jumping to 16 cores first, but that is still a few years out mainstream.

 

[Nothinman]

And you could always get 2 16-core CPUs if you use XP Pro or whatever version of Vista supports SMP machines.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
And you could always get 2 16-core CPUs if you use XP Pro or whatever version of Vista supports SMP machines.

Sorry, I meant 16 cores via 8x not 16x1 (realize thats not too clear in the post).

 

[Nothinman]

Sorry, I meant 16 cores via 8x not 16x1 (realize thats not too clear in the post).

Ah, yea I figured you meant 16x1. Not that I expect them to be here too soon but they'd obviously show up before the 32x1 models. =)

 

[VirtualLarry]

I wonder when CPUs will adopt the current GPU design model - very "wide" architectures, with "superthreading". Imagine Hyperthreading, with say, 16 threads, and a whole bunch of excution and load-store units that could be utilized dynamically by any given thread. IOW, pool execution resources together, and then have a thread-scheduler that dynamically allocates those resources. It would certainly blur the concept of individual cores quite a bit. I wouldn't be surprised if this sort of thing gets adopted, if and when they merge CPUs and GPUs. It could also give the benefit of a "wider" CPU core to single- or lesser-threaded apps, much like Conroe's secret "core multiplexing" feature, that allegedly allows for a single CPU thread with double the execution resources available to it.