Windows 8,Windows 9

[Mem]

Link.

Senior Research & Development at Microsoft, has shone a sliver of light on the possibility of 128-bit support coming to Windows 8. Morgan has been with the software giant since January 2002, but we're more intrigued with what his profile (first paragraph) and his status (second paragraph) recently stated:

Working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and longterm projects. Research & Development projects including 128bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan. Forming relationships with major partners: Intel, AMD, HP, and IBM.

Robert Morgan is working to get IA-128 working backwards with full binary compatibility on the existing IA-64 instructions in the hardware simulation to work for Windows 8 and definitely Windows 9.

 

[Nothinman]

If Itanic is the future of 128-bit computing we're all doomed...

 

[Gunbuster]

WHEW, I'll get my order for 17 exbibytes of RAM ready!

 

[Scotteq]

Pretty big project. Writing/Compiling a version of windows for Itanium is one thing... But, making it somehow backwards compatible with x86-64!?!?

I'm sure someone with more technical chops may correct me, but my undestanding is the instruction sets are completely different. I suppose you could write a container or a VM that operates within the "Windows-IA128" environment and can run your old code. But this strikes me as more than a little akin to the idea behind Java (run your objects in a container, independent of the OS/HW underneath)... And we all know how well *that* worked out.

I call this one a Niche play, at best.

 

[masteryoda34]

My bet is that they meant to say x86-64/AMD64/EM64T instead of IA-64.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: masteryoda34
My bet is that they meant to say x86-64/AMD64/EM64T instead of IA-64.

Yeah, something's not right. No one has announced a 128bit architecture. I haven't even heard rumors of one.

 

[Rhonda the Sly]

128bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan.

This 128-bit architecture has to be compatible with the Windows 8 kernel and fit in with the Windows 9 project plan, meaning 128-bit sounds like it could be released with Windows 9 and not earlier. Though it does sound off that it has been announced before 128-bit computing.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm not really certain that there would be any real performance increases from increasing the "width" of the CPU to 128 bits. Intel is going to intro their 256-bit AVX extensions in, I think, Haswell, but those are for vector code, not 128-bit scalar code. I also question the need for 128-bit addressing, unless you are attempting to model the universe itself or something.