The generation gap: Windows on multicore

[Lordbob75]

The generation gap: Windows on multicore

They say you can never be too young, or too rich. Or too handsome or too beautiful. And in the case of Intel-architecture PCs, it also seems that you can never have too many cores. With both the industry leader and its archrival, AMD, ratcheting up the core count, the future of personal computing will be experienced in parallel -- parallel processing, that is. The days of cranking up the clock speed to keep the pipeline flowing are gone. These days, it's all about width: How many instructions can you execute per clock cycle simultaneously?
Going hand in hand with the multicore push has been the evolution of desktop Windows to support these new chips. Today's dominant flavors -- Windows XP, Windows Vista, and soon Windows 7 -- all support Symmetrical Multiprocessing (SMP) out of the box, a trait they inherited thanks to their Windows NT (New Technology) lineage. However, experience has shown that multiprocessing across discrete CPUs is not the same thing as multiprocessing across integrated cores within the same CPU.

Read the rest of the 4 page article here: The generation gap: Windows on multicore | Platforms - InfoWorld


It is well worth the time.


While I feel that the Author loves XP a little too much, and is of the crowd that thinks Seven is just a repackaged Vista, he does seem to know his stuff with his tests. (Can anyone second that?)
His final point about Windows 7 really passing XP at about 16 cores makes sense, though I would expect to see that more at about 8 cores (imo).


Any other thoughts? (This is an older article, I do not believe he tested the RTM, just the Beta)


~Lordbob

 

[severedsolo]

well its an interesting read, i see what you mean about him loving XP a little too much, but as i was reading him spout out about how XP was so much faster on todays hardware a thought occured to me,

lets imagine a fictional world, where windows 98 was 32/64 bit and all manufacturors released drivers for every OS ever made, wouldnt 98 seem faster than XP? for the simple reason that XP Vista and 7 simply have more stuff in them to take advantage of modern technologies, on todays systems windows 98 would run so quick it would blow your socks off, simply because it was designed at a tie when computers were much slower than now, so your pc would be able to handle it without even breaking a sweat, you can see this effect when you play old games on a new system, where a system at the time would have had to be "state of the art" todays computers have evolved to the point where even a modest system is better than the systems that were available then,

conclusion: this guys saying that Xp runs faster, but our pc's have moved beyond Xp's limits so can handle it with inpunity,

just my $0.02

 

[stormy13]

Did you happen to see who that article is by? If not take a good look, says that the testing leaves a lot too be desired.

 

[MattRainier]

Doesn't say anything about the security of Vista/7 vs XP...which is unfortunate, because that's probably the most important stride made from XP to Vista/7...things like hardware-based data execution prevention that XP doesn't take advantage of...

 

[Lordbob75]

Did you happen to see who that article is by? If not take a good look, says that the testing leaves a lot too be desired.

Wait, is that the guy that John hates?

~Lordbob

 

[stormy13]

You got it.