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NT was designed to be platform-agnostic, and its original target was the DEC Alpha. Its process model owes nothing to pre-386 CPUs. The WinAPI CreateProcess fun
by dcrazy 4mo ago
NT was designed to be platform-agnostic, and its original target was the DEC Alpha. Its process model owes nothing to pre-386 CPUs. The WinAPI CreateProcess function is a layer atop NtCreateProcess, so that is where the pre-386 heritage lives. But even the WinAPI process model changed significantly with 32-bit Windows.
- peterfirefly 4mo agoNo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Development Windows NT was developed on various different CPUs before the Alpha was a thing. When it was released in 1993, it was released for three CPUs: IA-32, MIPS, and Alpha.
- dcrazy 4mo agoSorry, I had conflated Windows NT development with development of 64-bit Windows as told by Raymond Chen: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-magazine/cc718978(v=msdn.10) https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-... Raymond also says elsewhere that most WinNT engineers did development on i386, but doesn’t explicitly say what time period he is describing: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20250513-00/?p=111176 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20250513-00/?p=11...