Hardware & Technical Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Zen Windows 10 only

winterknight

W
I'd heard about this earlier, but then forgot (senior moment is my excuse), So here's the story from PCWorld
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3112...e-zen-chips-will-support-only-windows-10.html
Microsoft is slamming the door on PC builders and upgraders who might have hoped to use the new Intel Kaby Lake or AMD Zen chips for Windows 7 or Windows 8 PCs. Sorry: Both chips are officially supported only by Microsoft’s Windows 10.
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Will probably something we have to take note of when we upgrade. Something that we all have to do, pour more and more hard earned shekels into the black hole of computers.
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
Morbad said:
By and large any x86 CPU will execute any x86 code (mode permitting). You could run MS-DOS 3.3 or OS/2 2.1 on Kaby Lake, but without drivers for necessary subsystems, there may not be much point.
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True - but I've heard some strange things about Ring 0 becoming unavailable to anything but the CPU itself in forthcoming CPU's. Obviously probably nobody but me will have a use for the Netware example - but hardware is definitely evolving to the point where x86 isn't the old x86 any more.
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
Asp Explorer said:
but hardware is definitely evolving to the point where x86 isn't the old x86 any more.
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Let's be honest here for a second, that architecture should have died 20 years ago. Luckily ARM has devolved into something much, much worse though, so now x86 can stand as a beacon of sanity in a world without other real competition :D

From Microsoft's and even a security point of view it makes some kind of sense. Windows 7 is already partially unsupported by virtue of not getting all known vulnerabilities fixed, and it will drop out of support for good in only 3 years. Enforcing EoL though incompatible hardware can go at least some little way towards mitigating another XP situation.
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
Upon being asked by press, AMD have apparently officially confirmed that they will indeed be actively supporting Windows 7 with their Ryzen CPUs, so there's that CPU you don't have to rip half-working drivers out of an enterprise Windows SKU for.
 

Porina

Porina
Shadowdancer said:
Let's be honest here for a second, that architecture should have died 20 years ago.
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A quick search suggests around 20 years ago would put us in the Pentium II era. What should have happened instead?

In my opinion, the worst thing to happen to x86 was AMD64. Yes, it does provide benefits, but it is a bolt on to a bolt on to a bolt on... you get the idea. I wonder where we would be today with a proper ground up designed 64-bit CPU.
 

Asp Explorer

Asp Explorer
Porina said:
A quick search suggests around 20 years ago would put us in the Pentium II era. What should have happened instead?

In my opinion, the worst thing to happen to x86 was AMD64. Yes, it does provide benefits, but it is a bolt on to a bolt on to a bolt on... you get the idea. I wonder where we would be today with a proper ground up designed 64-bit CPU.
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Itanium reached rock bottom a while back and is still continuing to dig :D
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
Porina said:
In my opinion, the worst thing to happen to x86 was AMD64. Yes, it does provide benefits, but it is a bolt on to a bolt on to a bolt on... you get the idea. I wonder where we would be today with a proper ground up designed 64-bit CPU.
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Like the DEC Alpha (early 1990s)? (Of course the Alpha had some architectural quirks of its own, which meant among other things that Windows file system comression (edit: not encryption like I originally wrote) would remain weak all until Windows 10.)
 
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Morbad

Morbad
Porina said:
I wonder where we would be today with a proper ground up designed 64-bit CPU.
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Probably not all that better off. There is some baggage to the platform, but that has more to do with non-CPU factors (BIOS and UEFI, as well as a million old I/O standards).

x86 overhead is grossly overstated and the explicitly x86 parts of modern x86 CPUs are a tiny, tiny, fraction of total transistor count.

Shadowdancer said:
Like the DEC Alpha (early 1990s)? (Of course the Alpha had some architectural quirks of its own, which meant among other things that Windows file system encryption would remain weak all until Windows 10.)
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Not that I'd trust MS to safeguard my data even on (especially on?) Windows 10, but what changed in Windows 10 to improve file system encryption?
 

Morbad

Morbad
Interesting bit of info. I've used Window's file compression forever on storage drives and the compression ratio has always been poor (but acceptable for the task, given the minimal performance hit), guess that explains why.
 

winterknight

W
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winterknight

W
Patrick_68000 said:
Microsoft's dictatorship in the background ?
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Speaking as a retired electronics engineer, which you can read as after the mid 80's, computer related hardware engineer. Because if it didn't contain a processor or was connected to a computer, nobody was interested, even if better performance could be done in hardware only.
To get the best out of any new developments in hardware or software, there has to be cooperation between all parties. If those idea's are not backwards compatible, then so be it.

It's a lot better situation than a lot of other computer related devices, where if you want the latest and greatest is throw out all the old stuff and buy completely new, including the s/ware you run.
 

cmdr_Sisko

Banned
C
winterknight said:
I'd heard about this earlier, but then forgot (senior moment is my excuse), So here's the story from PCWorld
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3112...e-zen-chips-will-support-only-windows-10.html


Will probably something we have to take note of when we upgrade. Something that we all have to do, pour more and more hard earned shekels into the black hole of computers.
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This is not only silly, it's wrong. I have an MSI kabbby lake, and I dual boot into windows 7 and windows 10. Both work perfectly. This is a silly position for ms to take. if windows compiles for a haswell, it will compile for kabby. so silly Microsoft.
 
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