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>It is a shame that many sites didn't behaved like this when Threadripper was launched and basically said that the architecture was inefficient at using so many
by adfgaertyqer 5y ago
>It is a shame that many sites didn't behaved like this when Threadripper was launched and basically said that the architecture was inefficient at using so many cores or the software simply was not ready yet. Phoronix was one of the few which did it right.
I found it jaw-dropping how badly Microsoft handled that release. In some cases, the best way to improve multithreaded performance under Windows was to disable three quarters of the cores. Meanwhile any decent Linux distro scaled to the full core count out of the box.
I wonder to what extent this is holding back computer architecture. Certainly the Wintel cartel has historically back competition from other architectures, but even within x86-land we can see the monopoly power and technical inadequacy of Windows holding back innovation.
Linux supports every architecture known to man. Microsoft pretty much only supports x86. They have no excuse.
- atdrummond 5y agoThis narrative doesn’t jive with the Windows NT development history and its support for Alpha, PowerPC, etc. As well as Windows CE historical range of processor support.
- marcodiego 5y agoIt is a common view that the "wintel" architecture "monopoly" sucked investment that could feed other more efficient architectures than x86. It is known that NT supported many different architectures, mostly thanks to its VMS heritage, and CE supported POWER and even ARM. But as soon as the desktop became the strongest cash cow, I think other options were kept mostly as lifeboat options.
- blacksmith_tb 5y agoThere are plenty of reasons to be critical of MS, but they sell a lot of ARM machines these days...[1] 1: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-pro-x/processor https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-pro...
- hulitu 5y agoSo what ? Surface is a toy for rich people. It is not a real computer.
- adfgaertyqer 5y agoISA is largely irrelevant these days. The Wintel cartel helped stave off ARM's relevance, but now that war is over. That isn't what I'm talking about. There are other architectural innovations that could be made except for the fact that they work badly on Windows. Such as Threadripper's NUMA configuration, which isn't even particularly exotic.