Windows 8 128bit?

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

first "Windows 8" post!

http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009...8-windows-9.ars

good to see MS is getting out in front of 128bit instead of lagging behind like they did with 64bit

[CoffeeFiend]

IA-128? Shuffling deck chairs on the Itanic? Epic Fail, part deux? Groundhog day?

Thanks, but no thanks! I hope AMD comes up with a sane alternative this time again.

Not that I really see a point to 128 bit just yet. Surely, 256 Terabytes to 16 Exabytes of address space is still plenty for the foreseeable future... Or do we need that excuse (new arch) to add a few more registers to our CPUs? And don't try to tell me it's about data bus widths (no need to move to 128 bit for that) or specialized instructions (SIMD instruction sets already have that)...

[Sl@y3D for my n@me]

What? We are in the middle of migrating to 64bit. Why on earth would we need to bump it up to 128bit?

Are we going to lose so many years of application support just to give pretty numbers to our processors? I really don't see the need. Just imagine this scenario:

Windows 95 was a 16/32bit hybrid OS. It was designed to be compatible with as many older apps designed for its 16bit predecessors as possible, and provide enhancements for apps designed for 95. This marked the start of the 32bit transition. Now imagine if Windows 98 ran on the 64bit Itanium processor (you know, the one that failed completely?) and had to emulate x86 support, while 16bit apps didn't work at all.

Does that make sense at all? No. Not only would you lose significant hardware and software compability, you would not gain many advantages over Windows 95. Remember that RAM was in limited supply back then, nobody was anywhere near hitting the 4GB barrier, and processors would just not benefit from the extra bits, and would certainly never benefit from the emulation required. It would just cause a lot of annoyed developers, users, and see a lot of people switching to Macs.

But oh well, it's only a silly report. And if AMD steal the show again with AMD128, I will also be a happy customer.

[cluberti]

Note that there currently is NO Intel IA-128 architecture, so this is a farce. Not only that, but it seems likely that the Itanic is never going to see a 128bit variant, as Intel is putting it's money and research into x86_x64 (amd64), just like AMD is. If there is to be a 128bit chip for PCs in the future, it will likely be a continuation of x86_x64 in some way. The Itanic is not the road to 128bit.