Will Windows 8 be 128-bit?

Robert Hallock 8 Oct, 2009 at 6:39pm ET Article published in Tech

In another lesson regarding what you say online lasting forever, a senior Microsoft R&D employee has revealed on LinkedIn that Microsoft is actively working to add 128-bit compatibility to the Windows 8 kernel.

The leak was posted as the job description for Robert Morgan’s Senior R&D position at Microsoft–a position Morgan has held for nearly eight years. The job description has since been removed, but it remains in that wily Google cache:

Working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and longterm [sic] projects. Research & Development projects including 128bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan. Forming relationships with major partners: Intel, AMD, HP and IBM.

It’s hard to imagine 128-bit support being cooked into the desktop kernel, but it’s not unreasonable for Microsoft’s line of Server OSes. Several architectures, including Intel’s Itanium, Sun’s SPARC and IBM’s POWER line are expected to implement some semblance of 128-bit over the next five years. This timeline falls in line with Windows 8’s expected release date, which is no sooner than 2013.

Comments

9 Oct 2009 ~ 1:56am chrisWhite Maybe this will mean all 3rd parties will get their act together and give us 64-bit support for everything.
9 Oct 2009 ~ 2:00am Thrax Windows 8, codename Midori, is to be exclusively 64-bit.
9 Oct 2009 ~ 4:28am MachineDog What would be the purpose of 128-bit?
9 Oct 2009 ~ 5:21am Snarkasm SUPER-unlimited memory addressability?
9 Oct 2009 ~ 6:55am mirage I don't think 128-bit is coming any time soon, at least to the consumer space. What would require a larger address space than 17.2 billion gigabytes? Any ideas?
9 Oct 2009 ~ 7:07am Snarkasm Look, whether you like to admit it or not, Skynet is coming.

And it's hungry.
9 Oct 2009 ~ 7:10am Zuntar I'll believe it when i see it.
9 Oct 2009 ~ 7:15am ardichoke

Snarkasm wrote:

Look, whether you like to admit it or not, Skynet is coming.

And it's hungry.

Wait... how can an AI be hungry? It has no stomach

/me 's brain asplodes
9 Oct 2009 ~ 8:57am AlexDeGruven It would make sense that 128-bit compatibility would be built into the kernel for both server and desktop OSs.

Since MS has been using (essentially) a unified kernel architecture since XP/2003 (XP and 2003 share a kernel, Vista and 2008 share a kernel, 7 and 2008R2 share a kernel), it's been on the front-end user experience and back-end processes where the server and desktop OSs have differentiated themselves.

At 128-bit, encryption and compression operations would be super-massive-insaneo-fast, as well.
9 Oct 2009 ~ 9:20am Thrax Well, let's see... 128-bit is the key size for many of today's popular encryption algorithms, it can process quadruple-precision float/int (big deal for science). Those are the big two.
9 Oct 2009 ~ 9:23am mirage Ok, it is not all about address space, it makes sense now.
9 Oct 2009 ~ 3:07pm MachineDog That's what I was asking. I had read about the encryption key sizes, but I wasn't sure if that actually made a difference.

Also, can/do graphics cards do this kind of work currently?
9 Oct 2009 ~ 3:20pm Thrax GPUs are much faster at encryption and compression, but not so much double (and especially not) quadruple-precision float/int.
9 Oct 2009 ~ 6:20pm Tim We are just getting 64 bit to be widely accepted, and now they want 128 bit. Some people (like software engineers) are just never happy with what they've got.......
9 Oct 2009 ~ 6:51pm Thrax People being happy with what they've got has given us the last decade of misery under IE6.
9 Oct 2009 ~ 6:58pm Butters Whether or not 128-bit is used or accepted 5 years from now, I think its a good move and proper planning. Besides I rather have an OS planned with 128-bit support rather than an afterthought.

Cloud enviroments may require this- or at least Exchange 2015 will. Jerks!
10 Oct 2009 ~ 1:00am ardichoke

Thrax wrote:

People being happy with what they've got has given us the last decade of misery under IE6.

... He says to the person that willingly uses IE6 still. >_<

Being happy with what you have right now doesn't exactly fuel innovation.