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.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2009-09-23
If you ever did *serious* video-editing or numerical calculations, you wouldn't say so.
Any HD video you're editing can easily bust the 4GB barrier of 32bit operating systems. If you run guest operating systems within virtual machines, 4GB is just ridiculously small. At work we have servers with 16GBs of memory or more. They run over a dozen virtual machines at the same time.
Only because you don't need 64bit operating systems it doesn't mean there is no need for it.
I have been running Debian Lenny/Squeeze natively on amd64 for almost two years now and it works like a charm, I see NO problems at all. Even Skype and Acrobat Reader which are still native 32bits due to the disability of their developers to write a native amd64 version work like a charm. And when it works, why not use it!?!?
Seriously, if science and industry had always had this attention of "this is still enough", we'd still be messing around with 8bit computers or even worse.
Toast
Member since:2008-06-24
Let's look at the practical side of things. Even using 16GB memory modules, it would take 268,435,456 of them to reach the 64-bit limit. Just think of how much power it would take to keep that memory going...
There is a whole lot of need to go above 32-bit... but there is zero need to go above 64-bit as far as memory is concerned (now or at any time in the next 10 years).
Member since:2005-11-09
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.
Member since:
2005-11-09
there is no reason for most applications to be 64 bit. you really think word, etc needs to be capable of having a stack space that big?
64 bit is for the very real problem of memory limits on OSs and for specialized programs that do need to address that much memory just for their working data.