Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 22nd Oct 2007 13:48 UTC
Earlier today, OSNews ran a story on a presentation held by Microsoft's Eric Traut, the man responsible for the 200 or so kernel and virtualisation engineers working at the company. Eric Traut is also the man who wrote the binary translation engine for in the earlier PowerPC versions of VirtualPC (interestingly, this engine is now used to run XBox 1 [x86] games on the XBox 360 [PowerPC]) - in other words, he knows what he is talking about when it comes to kernel engineering and virtualisation. His presentation was a very interesting thing to watch, and it offered a little bit more insight into Windows 7, the codename for the successor to Windows Vista, planned for 2010.
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Member since:2005-07-24
"""
1) Purely 64-bit (maybe even 128...)
"""
Oops! You lost a lot of credibility with that. What, pray tell, do you think that > 64 bits would buy you? At the traditional rate of memory increase of doubling about every 2 years, even the 48 bits allotted to memory access in current 64 bit processors will last us 30+ years. And that's just a hardware limitation. It can easily be increased to 64 bits, extending us out to 60+ years. 64 bit filesystems are good for a about 40 years at the current exponential rates of expansion. (The 128 bitness of the otherwise excellent ZFS was, quite frankly, a marketing gimmick.)
And besides, what processor would you run this 128bit OS on? Did AMD announce something that I missed?
"""
I guess I'll be dead, burried and long forgotten before that ever happens... 
"""
Well, you are thinking in the right time scale, anyway.
Edited 2007-10-22 18:00
Member since:2007-10-22
Good point. Many novices use induction to say, well we ran out of 32-bit space and, now, 64 bit is needed, so lets jump to 128 bits.
Sometimes, people find uses for excess bits by incompletely utilizing the space... Like placing kernel stuff in 0x80000000-0xFFFFFFFF even before you run-out. I think I heard that IP numbers are way excessive, but good for routing.
Member since:2006-11-30
sbergman27
Don't underestimate the future. In 5 years someone might come up with something so revolutionary that will require that address space or maybe even more. God knows, maybe we'll all be living in full HD worlds (sound, music, video, etc) and memory will gome in TB sticks. So to say that >64 bits is unnecessary is to say like IBM did in the early 80's - "who needs personal computers?!?"
Creating a 128-bit or larger processor is a piece of cake anyways. All you have to do is enlargen the instruction size and mingle with the microcode. If I'm not mistaken...
The only reason no one is making these, is because there is no market for them yet.
But if you are starting a new and using a larger address space doesn't seriously hurt performance, then why settle for less? Why not embrace the future right now?
And for those who still can't see the point in 64-bit proccessors, all I've got to say to you is - memory, there is never enough of it.
Member since:2005-07-08
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 22:23 UTC
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 13:38 UTC
"The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 13:30 UTC, submitted by JRepin
"It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release." Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 22:06 UTC
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:45 UTC
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."More News »
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Member since:
2006-11-30
I dream of the day when Microsoft creates a sister company (just so that all those "monoply" aqusations wouldn't hold place and MS could do what ever with that product - for instance integrate AV).
That sister company should create a following OS:
1) Purely 64-bit (maybe even 128...)
2) Based on Singularity (great stuff that)
3) The .NET Framework should BE-THE-API (no need for p/invoke and stuff like that)
4) Everything even remotely related to backwards compatibility should be handled via virtualization
5) New PC hardware wouldn't hurt either. Throw out all the legacy crap (yes, your current hardware is also built around f**ked-up backwards compatibility layers) and definently redesign the USB stuff (programming for USB is such a-pain-in-the-A**)
6) Throughout, openess and well documentation should be embraced. For instance Bill Gates's letter - in which he said that ooxml should render perfectly only in IE - made me sick to my bones (really, somebody shoot that idiot instead of throwing a cake in his face).
I guess I'll be dead, burried and long forgotten before that ever happens...
Edited 2007-10-22 17:28