For years, Microsoft has insisted that open-source vendors acknowledge that its patent portfolio is a precursor to interoperability discussions. Monday, Microsoft shed that charade and announced an interoperability alliance with Red Hat for virtualization. Red Hat has long argued that patent discussions only cloud true interoperability, which is best managed through open source and open standards. Now it has got what it wanted; unlike the Novell-Microsoft agreements, there is no exclusionary patent deals or cross payments.
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Member since:2005-07-06
AFAIK (appropriate versions of) Windows on the MS hypervisor is capable of running paravirtualised - not just in supporting "accelerated device drivers" but also in core OS functions like virtual memory management. This still relies on virtualisation-aware hardware (unlike Xen paravirtualisation, for instance, which predated the wide availability of AMD-V and Intel VT-x) but is there as a performance optimisation. I believe the relevant OS releases are Vista and its derived server version (I forget which release number this is).
There were patches - contributed by Novell, actually - to support these hypercalls under Xen. There was some back-and-forth about how many of those were actually a performance win (and therefore worth supporting directly under Xen). I don't know if they have made their way into upstream (yet) but Novell may have been shipping / planning to ship these patches in their Xen in any case.
Member since:2005-07-06
AFAIK (appropriate versions of) Windows on the MS hypervisor is capable of running paravirtualised - not just in supporting "accelerated device drivers" but also in core OS functions like virtual memory management. This still relies on virtualisation-aware hardware (unlike Xen paravirtualisation, for instance, which predated the wide availability of AMD-V and Intel VT-x) but is there as a performance optimisation. I believe the relevant OS releases are Vista and its derived server version (I forget which release number this is).
There were patches - contributed by Novell, actually - to support these hypercalls under Xen. There was some back-and-forth about how many of those were actually a performance win (and therefore worth supporting directly under Xen). I don't know if they have made their way into upstream (yet) but Novell may have been shipping / planning to ship these patches in their Xen in any case.
There's nothing specific that makes Xen and Hyper-V the only systems that could support this, though. VMware could implement these paravirtualisations if they wanted; so could KVM, VirtualBox, etc.
Disclaimer: I work on Xen.
"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.
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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!"
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.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.
"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.
"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."
Member since:
2006-01-03
Maybe someday we will get paravirtualized Windows. Anyway good move for booth sides.