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I'm not sure I buy your point about ISA extensions. Many programs still target Windows XP or Windows 7, and if that "lag" remains the case, then it will be many
by Hello71 5y ago
I'm not sure I buy your point about ISA extensions. Many programs still target Windows XP or Windows 7, and if that "lag" remains the case, then it will be many, many years until vendors can reasonably require Windows 11 as a proxy for those ISA extensions. In the meantime, vendors can offer a Windows XP-11 version, and a Windows 11 "optimized" version, but at that rate, it would be just as much work to put the optimizations in the single version and make the program automatically detect the CPU, saving the user the trouble of figuring out which version they need while also making the CPU optimizations work on older Windows versions.
- giantrobot 5y agoI don't think Microsoft is concerned about ISA extensions for third parties. Apps can use function multi-versioning to support beneficial ISA extensions. I think they're more interested in ISA extensions and CPU features for first party code. They can enforce protections in drivers, kernel modules, and services.
- Hello71 5y agoBut Microsoft can do that too? They can compile one version of each DLL for SSE2 and another for AVX or whatever if they want, same as any other vendor. It's not like they can just turn off SSE2 for everybody, because it would break every program, and even new programs may use SSE2 instructions in combination with newer x86 extensions. Even if they did (and I'm not sure it's even possible in x86), I don't see how it could increase security anyways; any new Spectre vulnerability or whatever is probably going to be just as exploitable if not more so using AVX load instructions as SSE load instructions.