Re: My Vintage Dream PC

It cannot know about everything unless the other CPUs tell it. How will they tell it? That's what I'm trying to get you to think about.

/BAH

How does it do that? and how will it schedule itself? What about the priority interrupts that will interrupt its own processing?

Who does the moving of an app and its data from one CPU to another?

Which CPU will "own" that shared pool? What if the shared pool has to be exclusive to a few app and kept from the other apps?

This is why your proposal won't work well. Making that assumption is not a Good Idea. The access mapping has to be done by all CPUs. So where does the code that does this reside? In your proposal, it should be on the CPU where the kernal is running...but it can't because the other CPUs have to be able to read/write the common pool of memory. So do they have to submit a request to the Boss CPU for the data? Now you have a situation where the whole system is in wait mode for each and every bit of that common pool. When you include networking and peripherals in the mix, you would get better answers using a Chinese calculator (I cannot think of the word for this one today).

You can trash the kernal if the data is just right.

/BAH

What is wrong with it is that 1023 CPUs are idle while waiting for the

/BAH

and then the same kind of OS evolution we did will happen again.

/BAH

You are thinking about PC owners. Now think about all the systems whose functionality purposely excludes the touch of human hands. Morten's talking about those.

/BAH

Because your PC isn't actively running all of those threads; those thread are not simultaneously asking the Boss CPU for attention.

/BAH

Why bother...

They could just buy RedHat or Novell and not have too much R&D invested. The problem is they'd need to be working on getting Office, SQL Server etc running on Linux...

So getting their full set of API's on Linux with either X11 or a windowing system of their own design would be a good move.

I hope to test Windows 7 soon.

Bill

It is almost arguable that there are no laptops with enough power for the OS's fancy GUI "features".

Yes it was a mistake for them to set it up that way, but it should never have been offered for laptops with all the glitz turned on. Even now, if someone turns on all the glitz on a laptop install, they should have their head examined. Unless, of course, the laptop is specifically for multimedia and such. I am a utilitarian. I use a laptop for less CPU intensive tasks.

Thus spoke another "It's all bad" bandwagon dope.

You really do need to examine and understand how modern multicore processors work.

As it stands at present, you have no clue whatsoever.

Bullshit.

If anything, things will move toward "cloud computing" paradigms, and the OS will move in that direction as well.

What happens when a hugely CPU intensive screen saver comes on while hugely CPU intensive video conversion app runs in the background?

NOTHING, the app runs fine, and the screen saver does too. Now try that on an older CPU like an early 486.

I think it is you that doesn't know what you are talking about.

All those thread, and the screen saver timer, and all else, et al are all running, and they all do get "boss attention".

You, however, are still in a single thread mentality paradigm. Your faults are glaring.

Had you been a member of the MSDN, you would already have received emails with links to the download page for the RC evaluation release.

I joined back when it was free. Not sure if it is anymore.

What does your NAMBLA membership cost Archie? Surely you've opted for a lifetime membership by now.

You also said you're celibate ... and a woman pleaser extraordinaire (those two do clash a bit) ... and an engine-builder ... and a pool table coverer ... and an infant swimmer ... and so many, many wonderous things ad nauseum.

Others here say that you're a phony ... a liar ... an asshole ... a low self-esteem wannabe searching for the recognition and approval that eludes you now and will for all time be far beyond your reach. You have the personality of a piss clam; maybe less.

Of course, you could show that you're not afraid to take a risk by trying to solve the puzzle. Eh Archie? Personally, I think your fear of not being able to solve the puzzle after all of your boasting will eventually be your ultimate downfall as more and more people on Usenet recognize your multitude of nyms and consistent posting manner. Say it Archie. You decline to admit that you claimed to be celibate, so at least confirm that you're scared shitless of the puzzle exposing your incompetence. It must really suck to be you.

Fuck off and die, stalktard.

1. Once a processor is given something to do - run a web browser, execute realtime transactions, be a file system - it can do that for as long as it's needed. It only gets set up and killed by the supervisor and doesn't need attention after that. If it's snooped to see if it's behaving itself, it doesn't know it. If it wants to kick off another whole process, sure it will make a system call, but it will do that to a CPU that does nothing but manage the system processes, so is glad for something to do. My XP machine does all the management AND all the computing on one CPU, running hundreds of processes, so you can hardly argue (as people are doing here) that it couldn't manage the same number of processes if it had no application-running responsibility at all. Start making sense, folks.
2. It could be that running 1024 processors full-blast on one chip is thermally impossible. If so, some hardware priority mechanism may be needed to throttle some of them back; that is something any multicore chip will have to deal with at the design level. And there may not be the need to run all of them... even my dual-core Xeon averages 5% or so unless I'm doing Spice simulations. So what? Idle or throttle back

Start thinking about processors as *cheap and plentiful* and rethink the resulting OS structure. If you don't think my suggestions make sense, make some of your own. But "keep doing it the way Microsoft does it" is lazy and silly.

People are so reluctant to brainstorm, especially when it threatens their traditions, especially in public.

John

Say something with actual content, and we'll think about it.

John

Windows isn't all bad, it's only about 0.1% bad. Except that there are hundreds of millions of lines of code.

John