KHysiek - part of the bonus of the Hybrid HDDs is that apparently Longhorn will be a lot more intelligent on memory management. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed.) XP is certainly better than NT4 or the 9x world, but it's still not perfect. Part of the problem is that RAM isn't always returned to the OS when it's deallocated.
Case in point: Working on one of these WinHEC articles, I opened about 40 images in Photoshop. Having 1GB of RAM, things got a little sluggish after about half the images were open, but it still worked. (I wasn't dealing with layers or anything like that.) After I finished editing/cleaning each image, I saved it and closed it.
Once I was done, total memory used had dropped from around 2 GB max down to 600 MB. Oddly, Photoshop was showing only 60 MB of RAM in use. I exited PS and suddenly 400 MB of RAM freed up. Who was to blame: Adobe or MS? I don't know for sure. Either way, I hope MS can help eliminate such occurrences.
PS. In this case making hybrid hard drives with just 128MB of cache is laughable. Windows massive memory swapping will ruin cache effectiveness quickly.
Windows memory management is one of the worst moments in history of software development. It made all windows software bad in terms of managing memory and overall performance of OS. You actually need at least 2x of memory neede by applications to work flawlessly. I see that saga continues.
Regarding the "historical" question:
Strictly speaking, if you say "an historical" you should not pronounce the h, but many people use "an historical" and pronounce the h regardless.
If Microsoft manages graphics memory, it will sure be a lot easier to read this memory. This can make it easier to use the GPU as a co-processor to do non-graphics tasks. Now I could manage image-processing, but this doesn't sound like a no-graphcs task, does it? Anyways, it is a cpu task. Neither ATI nor nVidia has made it easy so far to use the GPU as co-processor. So I think ms managing this memory will be an improvement.
Haven't you ever been fishing, Pete? There you sit, with a baited hook waiting for a fish to bite. It's a very tense, anxious time. That's what baited breath means.... Or something. LOL. I never really thought about what "bated breath" actually meant. Suspended breath? Yeah, sure... whatever. :)
26 - Either way, we're still talking about a factor of 2. 1+ billion vs. 2+ billion DIMMs isn't really important in the grand scheme of things. :)
23 - As far as the "long long" vs "long", I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. AMD initially made their default integer size - even in 64-bit mode - a 32-bit integer (I think). Very few applications really need 64-bit integers, plus fetching a 64-bit int from RAM requires twice as much bandwidth as a 32-bit int. That's part one of my thoughts.
Part 2 is that MS may have done this for code compatibility. While in 99% of cases, an application really wouldn't care if the 32-bit integers suddenly became 64-bit integers, that's still a potential problem. Making the user explicitly request 64-bit integers gets around this problem. Things are backwards compatible.
Anyway, none of that is official, and I'm only partly sure I understand what you're asking in the first place. If you've got some links for us to check out, we can look into it further.
from page 3 "...and with the largest readily available DIMMs currently coming in at 2 GB in size"
in reply to #5, #6 - Crucial have had 4GB PC2100 DIMMs available for purchase from their website for quite some time. They're certainly not cheap, but they are readily available. If you've got the cash I'm sure they'll sell you a few dozen of them.
MS may have needed to restrict 64bit to long longs due to some internal operating system code issues ... If, in fact, linux distros that run on x86-64 impliment 64bit longs this may be the case. Otherwise I'd lean towards a hardware issue.
At this point I haven't looked into it, but I will be sure to ask around (as this is surely the place to do it).
MS wants to control whatever they can. Control graphics memory and we are another step towards commoditized graphics boards.
I wonder why MS went the way they did with the 64 bitness of the system. They went to (LL)P64 where just the long longs and the pointers are 64 bit, rather than LP64, where the longs are also 64 bit.
They are the only ones to do that. It seems like a half measure. A conversion from any Unix distro (or OS X) would need more work than is good, as well as a lessening in it's effectiveness as a 64 bit system. Are the 64 bit extentions of the x86 chips at fault?
Okay, the typos are fixed, and those that didn't like the 8-bit PNG graphics should now be happy. Iit was 4:30 AM when we finished, so our judgement was a bit impaired.) Just don't complain about how the PNGs are now five times as large. :)
My personal opinion is that Windows XP removed most of the problems with the Windows platform. We'll see how Longhorn works out when it gets here, but that's still almost two years off. The graphics effects are nice, but pretty much totally unnecessary. Hopefully, we'll see some true improvements in the overall performance and not just eye candy.
tbh, with the current state of things Linux game performance is not up to par with windows. Even with windows managing graphics memory, windows performance will likely be better.
And from a workstation perspective, having virtualized graphics memory for free is more of a blessing than a curse.
I do think it would be better if MS gave graphics developers a choice whether to allow windows to manage graphics memory or not...
Agreed. Windows should not be managing graphics ram...unless MS came up with some new techniques...MS seems to be pulling out all the stops though in my opinion. I think the hybrid drive is a good idea but like #12 said...that is quite a concern!
There's a typo on page 4 in the 6th paragraph. It reads "The next example given was of SQL Server 2003". It should be "The next example given was of SQL Server 2005".
#10 I always wondered how many more people would try Linux, but were scared off by the hatred and snobbery of so many of its users.
Seriously, would you personally be happier if more people moved to Linux, or would you rather they stay where they are so you can feel better hurling abuse at them?
I've seen this news about hybrid harddrives a few places, but I keep wondering about the nand flash on these drives.
Wont it wear out relatively quick, due to the numerous rewrites, like other solid state media?
I wish MS would keep their nose out of hardware design. If they start messing up hardware like they do software, then I am permanently becoming a MAC user.
Why would ANYONE desire to be at WinHell ??? Sombody must be into "PAIN"! From the reviews of Windoze 64 it would appear that MICROSUCKS is the best advertisement in the World for Linux.
"Merriam-Webster's Dictionary says that we can use an before an h- word that begins with an unstressed syllable. Thus, we might say an hisTORical moment, but we would say a HIStory book. Many writers would call that an affectation and prefer that we say a historical, but apparently, this choice is a matter of personal taste."
"An Historical" is grammatically correct British. American English uses "A Historical". I believe either are OK no matter where you are. Do a Google search on "grammar "an historical"" (must have the "an historical" in quotes or google will throw out the "an").
The term "Compute Cluster" has been in use for a decade in the HPC field. Compute clusters are clusters dedicated for computationally intensive tasks (rather than a render farm or a cluster for visualization, for example).
What makes Microsoft think they know how to use video card memory better than the hardware creators and their respective driver teams? If their memory management in Windows XP is any indication, I imagine everyone will need 1536MB video cards just to play Half-Life 1... And no, that's not a typo.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
36 Comments
Back to Article
JarredWalton - Saturday, April 30, 2005 - link
KHysiek - part of the bonus of the Hybrid HDDs is that apparently Longhorn will be a lot more intelligent on memory management. (I'm keeping my fingers crossed.) XP is certainly better than NT4 or the 9x world, but it's still not perfect. Part of the problem is that RAM isn't always returned to the OS when it's deallocated.Case in point: Working on one of these WinHEC articles, I opened about 40 images in Photoshop. Having 1GB of RAM, things got a little sluggish after about half the images were open, but it still worked. (I wasn't dealing with layers or anything like that.) After I finished editing/cleaning each image, I saved it and closed it.
Once I was done, total memory used had dropped from around 2 GB max down to 600 MB. Oddly, Photoshop was showing only 60 MB of RAM in use. I exited PS and suddenly 400 MB of RAM freed up. Who was to blame: Adobe or MS? I don't know for sure. Either way, I hope MS can help eliminate such occurrences.
KHysiek - Friday, April 29, 2005 - link
PS. In this case making hybrid hard drives with just 128MB of cache is laughable. Windows massive memory swapping will ruin cache effectiveness quickly.KHysiek - Friday, April 29, 2005 - link
Windows memory management is one of the worst moments in history of software development. It made all windows software bad in terms of managing memory and overall performance of OS. You actually need at least 2x of memory neede by applications to work flawlessly. I see that saga continues.CSMR - Thursday, April 28, 2005 - link
A good article!Regarding the "historical" question:
Strictly speaking, if you say "an historical" you should not pronounce the h, but many people use "an historical" and pronounce the h regardless.
Pete - Thursday, April 28, 2005 - link
That's about how I reasoned it, Jarred. The fisherman waits with (a?)bated breath, while the fish dangles from baited hook. Poor bastard(s).'Course, when I went fishing as a kid, I usually ended up bothering the tree frogs more than the fish. :)
patrick0 - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
If Microsoft manages graphics memory, it will sure be a lot easier to read this memory. This can make it easier to use the GPU as a co-processor to do non-graphics tasks. Now I could manage image-processing, but this doesn't sound like a no-graphcs task, does it? Anyways, it is a cpu task. Neither ATI nor nVidia has made it easy so far to use the GPU as co-processor. So I think ms managing this memory will be an improvement.JarredWalton - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
Haven't you ever been fishing, Pete? There you sit, with a baited hook waiting for a fish to bite. It's a very tense, anxious time. That's what baited breath means.... Or something. LOL. I never really thought about what "bated breath" actually meant. Suspended breath? Yeah, sure... whatever. :)Pete - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
Good read so far, Derek and Jarred. Just wanted to note one mistake at the bottom of page three: bated, not baited, breath.Unless, of course, they ordered their pie with anchovies....
Calin - Wednesday, April 27, 2005 - link
"that Itanium is not dead and it's not going anywhere"I would say "that Itanium is not dead but it's not going anywhere"
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
26 - Either way, we're still talking about a factor of 2. 1+ billion vs. 2+ billion DIMMs isn't really important in the grand scheme of things. :)23 - As far as the "long long" vs "long", I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. AMD initially made their default integer size - even in 64-bit mode - a 32-bit integer (I think). Very few applications really need 64-bit integers, plus fetching a 64-bit int from RAM requires twice as much bandwidth as a 32-bit int. That's part one of my thoughts.
Part 2 is that MS may have done this for code compatibility. While in 99% of cases, an application really wouldn't care if the 32-bit integers suddenly became 64-bit integers, that's still a potential problem. Making the user explicitly request 64-bit integers gets around this problem. Things are backwards compatible.
Anyway, none of that is official, and I'm only partly sure I understand what you're asking in the first place. If you've got some links for us to check out, we can look into it further.
PrinceGaz - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
from page 3 "...and with the largest readily available DIMMs currently coming in at 2 GB in size"in reply to #5, #6 - Crucial have had 4GB PC2100 DIMMs available for purchase from their website for quite some time. They're certainly not cheap, but they are readily available. If you've got the cash I'm sure they'll sell you a few dozen of them.
DerekWilson - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
MS may have needed to restrict 64bit to long longs due to some internal operating system code issues ... If, in fact, linux distros that run on x86-64 impliment 64bit longs this may be the case. Otherwise I'd lean towards a hardware issue.At this point I haven't looked into it, but I will be sure to ask around (as this is surely the place to do it).
bobsmith1492 - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
Melgross - is that English?? I read it over real quickly and it was like... dude, what's he talking about? It just took a good close look though. :Pmelgross - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
MS wants to control whatever they can. Control graphics memory and we are another step towards commoditized graphics boards.I wonder why MS went the way they did with the 64 bitness of the system. They went to (LL)P64 where just the long longs and the pointers are 64 bit, rather than LP64, where the longs are also 64 bit.
They are the only ones to do that. It seems like a half measure. A conversion from any Unix distro (or OS X) would need more work than is good, as well as a lessening in it's effectiveness as a 64 bit system. Are the 64 bit extentions of the x86 chips at fault?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
Okay, the typos are fixed, and those that didn't like the 8-bit PNG graphics should now be happy. Iit was 4:30 AM when we finished, so our judgement was a bit impaired.) Just don't complain about how the PNGs are now five times as large. :)My personal opinion is that Windows XP removed most of the problems with the Windows platform. We'll see how Longhorn works out when it gets here, but that's still almost two years off. The graphics effects are nice, but pretty much totally unnecessary. Hopefully, we'll see some true improvements in the overall performance and not just eye candy.
Googer - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
Linux on a MAC: Total freedom from with in a confined space.DerekWilson - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
tbh, with the current state of things Linux game performance is not up to par with windows. Even with windows managing graphics memory, windows performance will likely be better.And from a workstation perspective, having virtualized graphics memory for free is more of a blessing than a curse.
I do think it would be better if MS gave graphics developers a choice whether to allow windows to manage graphics memory or not...
Son of a N00b - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
dont you dare go screwing up the performance of my vid card ms...if you do im going linux...suryad - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
Agreed. Windows should not be managing graphics ram...unless MS came up with some new techniques...MS seems to be pulling out all the stops though in my opinion. I think the hybrid drive is a good idea but like #12 said...that is quite a concern!Cygni - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
#10's post makes me giggle.AtaStrumf - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
OK fitten, that clears up the grammatical "errors", but what's up with the 16-bit colors? Some sort of a graphical pun?mikecel79 - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
There's a typo on page 4 in the 6th paragraph. It reads "The next example given was of SQL Server 2003". It should be "The next example given was of SQL Server 2005".There is no SQL 2003.
ukDave - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
Typo: Page 7, "Thoughts on the Longhorn Driver Model". Second paragraph, last line.'loose' should be 'lose'.
*cough* bored :P
fishbits - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
#10 I always wondered how many more people would try Linux, but were scared off by the hatred and snobbery of so many of its users.Seriously, would you personally be happier if more people moved to Linux, or would you rather they stay where they are so you can feel better hurling abuse at them?
Truder - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
I've seen this news about hybrid harddrives a few places, but I keep wondering about the nand flash on these drives.Wont it wear out relatively quick, due to the numerous rewrites, like other solid state media?
Googer - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
I wish MS would keep their nose out of hardware design. If they start messing up hardware like they do software, then I am permanently becoming a MAC user.Beenthere - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
Why would ANYONE desire to be at WinHell ??? Sombody must be into "PAIN"! From the reviews of Windoze 64 it would appear that MICROSUCKS is the best advertisement in the World for Linux.Viditor - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
"uh, "readily available" "Don't bother me with details...;-)
fitten - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
Just a follow-on:From the site: http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/determiners/det...
"Merriam-Webster's Dictionary says that we can use an before an h- word that begins with an unstressed syllable. Thus, we might say an hisTORical moment, but we would say a HIStory book. Many writers would call that an affectation and prefer that we say a historical, but apparently, this choice is a matter of personal taste."
fitten - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
#2"An Historical" is grammatically correct British. American English uses "A Historical". I believe either are OK no matter where you are. Do a Google search on "grammar "an historical"" (must have the "an historical" in quotes or google will throw out the "an").
The term "Compute Cluster" has been in use for a decade in the HPC field. Compute clusters are clusters dedicated for computationally intensive tasks (rather than a render farm or a cluster for visualization, for example).
nastyemu25 - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
uh, "readily available"Viditor - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
A quick note:"and with the largest readily available DIMMs currently coming in at 2 GB in size"
I believe that Samsung, AMD and MSoft were showing 4GB Registered Dimms at the show...
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/in...
Shinei - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
What makes Microsoft think they know how to use video card memory better than the hardware creators and their respective driver teams? If their memory management in Windows XP is any indication, I imagine everyone will need 1536MB video cards just to play Half-Life 1... And no, that's not a typo.AtaStrumf - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
he, he, HEC = JOKE in my languageThere's your explanation Kristopher ;-)
KristopherKubicki - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
Who wrote those MS slides!Page 1 "An" Historical... ????
Page 6 "Compute" Cluster Edition....
Usually its bad to get the slides wrong on Day 1 of your own event!
Kristopher
Icehawk - Tuesday, April 26, 2005 - link
I'm up too early!