64-bit? Pshaw! Nothing Less Than 128-bit Will Do!

**Lemur** · 10-08-2009, 18:20

Apparently there's a 128-bit version of Windows 8 in the works. I can see the enterprise use for this, but maybe not for the consumer ...

The discovery came to light after Microsoft Research employee, Robert Morgan, carelessly left details of his work on the social-networking site, LinkedIn.

The senior researcher's profile said he was: "Working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and longterm projects. Research & Development projects including 128-bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan. Forming relationships with major partners: Intel, AMD, HP and IBM." [...]

A move to 128-bit support would be a bold move for Microsoft. Many, including PC Pro's own Jon Honeyball, were urging Microsoft to make Windows 7 64-bit only, but the company continues to offer a 32-bit version of the forthcoming OS.

What do Orgahs think? Why does Msoft still offer a 32-bit version of Win7? Is there a practical reason for it?

-edit-

Thinking about it, the old IBM System 38s had 128-bit addressing, you know, AS400 and all of that. Also, on Slashdot several posters are arguing that this will only apply to the filesystem, not the full OS. Hmm.

**drone** · 10-08-2009, 18:53

128 bits? That's ridiculous! 18446744073709551616 bytes should be enough for anyone!

**Beskar** · 10-08-2009, 20:04

They offer 32-bit as customers/people who buy the computers keep buying rubbish ones.

They would need to stop all the companies like dell and intel, etc, from producing 32-bit first, and after a year or so, can bring in 64-bit only.

Plus, programmers are still doing 32-bit programmes, even though there are 64-bit Mac and Linux..

**Husar** · 10-09-2009, 12:00

Originally Posted by Beskar

They offer 32-bit as customers/people who buy the computers keep buying rubbish ones.

They would need to stop all the companies like dell and intel, etc, from producing 32-bit first, and after a year or so, can bring in 64-bit only.

Plus, programmers are still doing 32-bit programmes, even though there are 64-bit Mac and Linux..

Uhm, I don't know of any CPU in the last at least 2 years that was 32bit, the last 32bit CPUs were the Pentium 4s, for AMD it were the Athlon XPs and possibly Semprons(not sure when those changed to 64bit).
For some reason you usually get a 32bit OS when you buy a notebook or complete system, many of them even say you won't get to use the whole 4GB of RAM, why they don't just give you a 64bit OS is beyond me, they could even do some silly marketing by claiming it's twice as good or so.

**Tellos Athenaios** · 10-09-2009, 12:36

So? 128bits is not particularly interesting for consumer grade equipment since there are still plenty of 48bits [quite a few 32bits systems are actually built around 48bits components, and you can for instance compile the Linux kernel to take advantage of this: thereby enabling up to 64GB ram on that machine: the feature is commonly called Physical Address Extension or PAE for short] & ARM devices [mobile phones, and other low-power equipment] around.

Now the real benefit of 64bits OSes is therefore that the 64bit OSes can take advantage of the more efficient floating point instructions, the more advanced security primitives, and most importantly the larger number of processor registers that AMD64 and similar architectures provide.

What's the real benefit of 128bit OSes? Primarily that you get a similar bump in address space which as it happens is only useful for high-volume data work-flows. E.g. large enterprise database applications. But that means you also have to have underlying filesystems etc. that actually can deliver sufficient data to saturate all that bandwidth. Certainly NTFS as we know it is not up to the job; even the relatively moderate demands of a University network would absolutely cripple an NTFS based set-up.

I dread to think of what would happen to our paychecks if banks adopted a 128-bit Windows based system as their bread & butter workhorse.

**Beskar** · 10-09-2009, 16:38

Originally Posted by Husar

Uhm, I don't know of any CPU in the last at least 2 years that was 32bit, the last 32bit CPUs were the Pentium 4s, for AMD it were the Athlon XPs and possibly Semprons(not sure when those changed to 64bit).
For some reason you usually get a 32bit OS when you buy a notebook or complete system, many of them even say you won't get to use the whole 4GB of RAM, why they don't just give you a 64bit OS is beyond me, they could even do some silly marketing by claiming it's twice as good or so.

I believe there were celerons, dual-cores and others as well.

**Caius** · 10-17-2009, 05:13

Semprons(not sure when those changed to 64bit).

Some years ago. I have this pc 3 or 4 years ago and its 64 bit compatible.

By the way, I'm taking this subject called "Architecture of Computers" and we talked a bit. Which is the purpose of creating a 128-bit SO?

**Papewaio** · 10-23-2009, 01:43

Next logical step.

Could make a lot of things more streamlined (registers to memory addresses), could be good for security and IPV6.

Also more memory! More memory the quicker it will fill.

Imagine 3D web cams... the backbone for that information will require serious hardware.

**Caius** · 10-24-2009, 04:49

This machine will be useless in no time, gah, I thought it was a good choice to get a cheaper one.

**Beskar** · 10-24-2009, 20:50

It is a good choice to get an expensive one (preferably customised/own built/etc), then leave it for a for a few years.

My computer I have got is almost approaching it's 2nd Birthday and it still plays games on the higest settings! I know people ranted and waved about how this graphics card combination does double the power of my existing, however, I don't need it as I can already play the games on highest settings with my 8800GTX.