Linked by Jordan Spencer Cunningham on Wed 7th Oct 2009 19:15 UTC, submitted by JayDee
Microsoft has been thinking about Windows 8 for a while now even through the production of Windows 7. Some information has been gathered by our friends over at Ars, and all of this said information points to possible 128-bit versions of Windows 8 and definite 128-bit versions of Windows 9. Update: Other technophiles better-versed than I in this whole 64/128-bit business pointed out that it must be for the filesystem (such as ZFS described in this article) rather than the processor and memory scheme.
Permalink for comment 388253
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Recent Original Stories
Recent Comments
Headlines
Random Comments
Random Stories
Random OS Link
Member since:
2006-01-25
He didn't say it wasn't needed. He said it wasn't needed for most programs, which is absolutely true. He also said it WAS needed for programs which required large working sets (more than about 2GB, i.e. video editing and such), and to give the OS more address space to map processes into.
For virtually any 32-bit piece of software that has a working set less than 2GB and that doesn't require any 64-bit calculations, there is virtually no benefit to moving to 64-bit. In fact it can and will often do nothing but make it run slower.
That in no way means that moving to 64-bit addressing wasn't needed - it was absolutely needed, but most of the problem it addressed is isolated to OS memory management. There is simply no compelling reason to port a working 32-bit application to 64-bit unless you need the additional address space or you need to do 64-bit computations.
There are of course cases where a port is needed because of the need to interface existing 64-bit DLLs and executables (i.e. explorer extensions, plugins, etc.) But that is simply a side effect of moving one or the other to 64-bit - it isn't in and of itself a reason to do it.