There have been a number of ‘unconfirmed’ rumours floating around in the last few days about Windows 8 being 128 bit. While certainly an exciting thought, the likelihood of it being true is almost nil. Windows 8 being 128 compatible is like Windows XP Professional x64 being 64 bit. While it ‘worked’ to an extent, there was almost no market at the time, and the implementation was extremely buggy, to say the least. It was a half-assed attempt to say that Windows XP was 64 bit compatible.
There are no 128 bit capable processors available. Microsoft is building for a market that hasn’t even started yet. They’ve barely transitioned to 64 bit! Windows 7 is the first Windows OS that has a truly viable 64 bit market. Manufacturers have had a few years to develop 64 bit drivers, and consequently, it is far more likely that you can install Windows 7 x64 now than you could install Windows XP x64. Add to that that almost every new computer ships with a 64 bit processor, and you have yourself one viable market. Software developers also now have mature SDK’s, and have had a few years to transition to 64 bit computing.
Microsoft has finally shipped Windows 7, with a much shorter timeframe than Windows Vista did. I suspect that they are going to try to maintain such an active pace, shipping software every 18-24 months or so, rather than the 5 years it took for Vista. There is no way that either the hardware market or the software market will be remotely ready for 128 bit computing in 2 years. Yes, they may make it ‘functional’, like XP x64 was ‘functional’, but it will not truly be 128 bit. I suspect that Windows 9 will be as 128 bit mature as Windows Vista was 64 bit mature. Don’t expect true 128 bit computing till Windows 10.
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Tags: IA-128, IA-64, Microsoft, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, x64
It would take quite a lot of improvement in the software technology to make use of video processors as if they were the main CPU–that would allow for some kind of 128-bit (if not 256-bit) computing. I wouldn’t say it’s impossible, but I don’t know if that’s where MS would want to put their effort.
Yes, it would, and did take a lot of work. What you might be unaware of however, is that Windows 7 supports it, as well as Mac OS X Snow Leopard. GPU/CPU parallel processing is here, and brings far more benefit than 128 bit will for the next 6 years.
The other thing to note, is that IA-128 would actually refer to the Itanium server processing, not regular old x64… So while it may show up in server side computing in the next 6 years, it will not on the client side.