4 ms·

I wouldn't. I interned in core operating systems division a few years ago. Managers cared about portability.

by joshhart 16y ago

eru 16y ago
Why did they care?
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Core OS is expected to go anywhere. x86/x64 today. Itanium/Alpha yesterday. Power for XBox360. ARM for embedded. What is XBox720 going to have? The HAL was built so that you can retarget quickly. I think people would be pretty upset if it was your team that checked in some code that blocked them from porting to a new platform quickly.
rbanffy 16y ago
> Managers cared about portability. Tell that to those who wanted to run Office and Visual Studio on their Alpha boxes...
- runjake 16y ago
  I don't get it, are you trolling? You're talking about over a decade ago, back when NT on Alpha was relevant. A lot changes in 10 years.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    I am saying that a lot more than the base OS has to be ported. That includes, of course, Visual Studio, Office, games, utilities, 3rd-party titles, browser plugins (so you can do net banking), device drivers (so you can scan, print, use a smartcard reader). Windows benefits from a huge complex ecosystem that will have to move with Microsoft. It took years before AMD64 was fully supported and it's semicompatible with ancient x86. ARM is a completely different beast. I am pointing out Microsoft tried to make this move before and failed. When Apple did it (and they did it twice), the carrots were huge performance gains. This carrot implies a loss of performance. Unless hardware makers start flooding the market with Windows 8-compatible ARM machines, 3rd parties may opt to stay within the comfy confines of x86/AMD64. It is a very tricky move. Also, since most of what a Linux distro offers (and that includes OpenOffice, editors, IDEs, languages, games) already runs on ARM, this move would also benefit the competition that's already positioned to benefit from this without the need to convince 3rd parties to jump along. I imagine Microsoft will impose restrictions on what OS and software you will be able to install on those machines to counter that. It will be fun to watch.
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      As you know, they've apparently already ported Office (or are at least well on their way). The carrot in this case is battery life. And I think the markets will turn out to be different ones. The ARM machines will largely be tablets and netbooks. The Intel SoCs will have poorer battery life, but better perf. That's where you'll have VS and such. Of course .NET apps will run across both. And the Windows Marketplace will largely be .NET apps. They failed at this before, because there was no motivation to succeed. Alpha, MIPS, Itanium, were all DOA. But they did help ensure that the Windows kernel was portable.

I wouldn't. I interned in core operating systems division a few years ago. Managers cared about portability.

eru 16y ago

Why did they care?

kenjackson 16y ago
Core OS is expected to go anywhere. x86/x64 today. Itanium/Alpha yesterday. Power for XBox360. ARM for embedded. What is XBox720 going to have? The HAL was built so that you can retarget quickly. I think people would be pretty upset if it was your team that checked in some code that blocked them from porting to a new platform quickly.

rbanffy 16y ago

> Managers cared about portability. Tell that to those who wanted to run Office and Visual Studio on their Alpha boxes...

runjake 16y ago
I don't get it, are you trolling? You're talking about over a decade ago, back when NT on Alpha was relevant. A lot changes in 10 years.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  I am saying that a lot more than the base OS has to be ported. That includes, of course, Visual Studio, Office, games, utilities, 3rd-party titles, browser plugins (so you can do net banking), device drivers (so you can scan, print, use a smartcard reader). Windows benefits from a huge complex ecosystem that will have to move with Microsoft. It took years before AMD64 was fully supported and it's semicompatible with ancient x86. ARM is a completely different beast. I am pointing out Microsoft tried to make this move before and failed. When Apple did it (and they did it twice), the carrots were huge performance gains. This carrot implies a loss of performance. Unless hardware makers start flooding the market with Windows 8-compatible ARM machines, 3rd parties may opt to stay within the comfy confines of x86/AMD64. It is a very tricky move. Also, since most of what a Linux distro offers (and that includes OpenOffice, editors, IDEs, languages, games) already runs on ARM, this move would also benefit the competition that's already positioned to benefit from this without the need to convince 3rd parties to jump along. I imagine Microsoft will impose restrictions on what OS and software you will be able to install on those machines to counter that. It will be fun to watch.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    As you know, they've apparently already ported Office (or are at least well on their way). The carrot in this case is battery life. And I think the markets will turn out to be different ones. The ARM machines will largely be tablets and netbooks. The Intel SoCs will have poorer battery life, but better perf. That's where you'll have VS and such. Of course .NET apps will run across both. And the Windows Marketplace will largely be .NET apps. They failed at this before, because there was no motivation to succeed. Alpha, MIPS, Itanium, were all DOA. But they did help ensure that the Windows kernel was portable.