Text 10915, 84 rader
Skriven 2006-05-05 17:25:28 av Jim Adams (1:379/45)
  Kommentar till text 10904 av Mike '/m' (1:379/45)
Ärende: Re: The View Beyond Vista
=================================
From: Jim Adams <jsadams@compuserve.com>

Mike '/m' wrote:
> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_19/b3983019.htm
>
> ===
> Early next year, when Microsoft (MSFT ) celebrates the release of its
> much delayed update of Windows, called Vista, it will probably mark the
> end of the road for Windows as an all-in-one operating system. Projects
> on the scale of Vista -- updating and writing tens of millions of lines
> of interlocking code -- are becoming impossible to debug fully. While
> Windows will be around and making money for Microsoft for a long time,
> there's a better way to build such software. But getting beyond the
> complexities of Vista will mean changing the Windows operating system in
> fundamental ways. The challenge facing Microsoft is not simply its
> massive size but the fact that its pieces interact in ways that are
> beyond human comprehension. My installation of Windows XP Professional,
> for example, includes 1,600 "dynamic link libraries," a type of file
> that's particularly likely to cause troublesome unanticipated
> interactions.
>
> The cure for this complexity lies in a new paradigm for PC software.
> Technology exists that can divide a large and complex operating system
> into a number of smaller, simpler units that run on one computer but
> function independently of each other. To the user, it will look much
> like today's software, but it will be less prone to glitches, crashes,
> and attacks.
>
> THE IDEA OF SPLITTING THE SOFTWARE BRAIN of a single, physical computer
> into a number of software-based "virtual machines" has been around since
> IBM (IBM ) made such software available on mainframes in the late 1960s.
> In recent years the technique has been used extensively on the big
> computers that power corporate networks and the Internet. For example, a
> single computer might be split into three "virtual servers" -- one to
> handle Web pages, one to process e-mail, and the third to run a
> database. An immediate benefit is improved reliability, because a
> software crash on any one virtual machine does not affect the others.
>
> A scenario of how this might work on PCs was laid out for me by Gregory
> Bryant, general manager of Intel's (INTC ) digital office platform
> division. One virtual machine might handle ordinary applications, such
> as Microsoft Word or TurboTax. A second could be optimized to handle
> digital media: music, videos, or photos. Both of these systems would
> link to the network (and Internet) through a third virtual machine that
> would handle the actual connections. This division of labor could make
> PCs safer, since the communications module would be solely dedicated to
> secure networking and need to be updated only to fend off viruses and
> other malware.
>
> Except for the networking part, which will be supported on new Intel
> chips due out later this year, this approach could be achieved today
> using software from Microsoft or VMware. But each virtual machine would
> have to run its own copy of Windows, making the whole system
> spectacularly inefficient.
>
> The post-Vista computer will probably use a far more streamlined
> operating system that loads only the components needed by each virtual
> machine. Linux has this sort of modularity today, but Windows does not.
> What's more, running several virtual machines on an operating system
> will require a big increase in processing power, preferably from
> multiple processors. The switch is already under way. Nearly all the
> chips produced by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD ) will have at
> least two processors. The Sony (SNE ) PlayStation 3 is built around a
> nine-processor IBM chip, and Intel has plans for chips packed with
> thousands of processors.
>
> The operating system that makes this all work won't be Vista, and
> probably won't arrive until 2012. Microsoft could be the pioneer, but it
> will require major cultural changes, given that the company has spent
> the past 20 years making Windows ever bigger and richer in features. The
> fact that Microsoft currently has a monopoly is no guarantee, as we are
> talking about a truly disruptive change. The post-Vista world could see
> the first real competition for the desktop since Windows 95 cemented
> Microsoft's dominance a decade ago.
> ===
>
>  /m
  updating and writing tens of millions of lines
of interlocking code -- are becoming impossible to debug fully.

Becoming impossible?

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5
 * Origin: Barktopia BBS Site http://HarborWebs.com:8081 (1:379/45)