Windows 8 to Support 32, 64 or 128-Bit?
Windows 7 is not even officially released yet; rumors are already circulating about Microsoft’s next OS, Windows 8. One rumor is that Windows 8 will support 128-bit architecture only, dumping 32 and 64-bit compatibility completely based on the linkedin profile of Microsoft employee, Robert Morgan. The profile in question has been taken down, but thanks to Google cache, users can still access it and read info about the 128-bit work done at Microsoft for Windows 8 and Windows 9 right from the source. I believe some of you have read this info on other sites, believe it or not.
Let’s review what he has revealed: “Working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and long term 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.
Robert Morgan is working to get IA-128 working backwards with full binary compatibility on the existing IA-64 instructions in the hardware simulation to work for Windows 8 and definitely Windows 9.”
Okay, he is working in a "high security" dept. at MSFT; this info tells us exactly what he is doing there? WOW! However, I still don’t think Microsoft have fully unlocked the potential of 64-bit software. It’s true that AMD and Intel are working on 128-bit chips; this is something that’s been out there for a while now. But Windows 8 can’t possibly be 128-bit only or else it will become a nightmare when you consider that you have to maintain compatibility with 32-bit applications.
Windows 7 still features its editions both in 32-bit and 64-bit and it’s the fact that almost every modern processor supports 64-bit computing. More important, this is to maintain compatibility with older software primarily in Microsoft’s business market. XP Mode, the virtualization plug-in that allows you to run older software in a licensed copy of XP, goes some way towards addressing this and many people are hoping that 32-bit support will be dropped from Windows 8 completely. Unfortunately, it can’t happen, because you need hardware virtualization support on the motherboard to make XP Mode work for you, but nowhere near have motherboards supported this yet. By the time Windows 8 comes out (probably in 2011 or 2012) it might be possible that all motherboards will, but still they can’t guarantee this will happen.
Also, you can’t seriously expect everyone, especially the notoriously slow to upgrade corporations to abandon their 32-bit hardware. Are vendors and developers going to have to support 3 versions of their programs? GOD knows.
In my endless search with both Google and Bing, I found most rumors were about “Windows 7 only supports 128-bit”, which all came about due to Morgan’s story. Well, it seems pretty pointless to me. Most people will still only just be going with 64-bit, and will not really need so much RAM in desktops or notebooks to justify the additional memory space. Anyway, what do you learn from these rumors? Is it possible that Windows 8 will concentrate on 128-bit version? Or will things simply be like they are today, except instead of people running 32-bit applications on 64-bit machines they’ll be running 32-bit apps on 128-bit machines? And what do you think of the idea that Windows 8 might ship in 32-bit AND 64-bit AND 128-bit versions simultaneously？Ha-ha, I am confused now.