Reply to: Windows Vista

[Joe Black]

And so the cycle continues. Crap software, cant be bothered to fix it, just chuck some faster hardware in instead. Faster hardware means we can write crapper software untill the hardware can't cope. So get some faster hardware.

Hey, that's my way of thinking.

Which is cheaper, paying an IT consultant squillions per day to optimise the software, or (after Intel has spent a few bil on R&D) just reap the benefits and purchase another 1GB for fifty quid?

[AtW]

Following your logic we should not have hardware accelerators for 3D apps?

Hardware is in reality software, just in hardware implementation - TCP/IP should not require special hardware per se as general purpose CPU should be able to deal with it, but new opcodes specifically designed to help would improve situation - SSE4 by Intel actually looks good, particularly CRC32 opcode - that should save plenty of ticks for TCP/IP.

[DaveB]

It was probably 15-20 years old actually, they took it 10 years ago and back then it was in use for a long time.

Intel is preparing chipsets that will accelerate TCP/IP - this should provide enough kick to actually have available bandwdith being the main bottleneck.

And so the cycle continues. Crap software, cant be bothered to fix it, just chuck some faster hardware in instead. Faster hardware means we can write crapper software untill the hardware can't cope. So get some faster hardware.

[AtW]

If you take 10 year old technology

It was probably 15-20 years old actually, they took it 10 years ago and back then it was in use for a long time.

Intel is preparing chipsets that will accelerate TCP/IP - this should provide enough kick to actually have available bandwdith being the main bottleneck.

[TheMonkey]

For which they have suffered and now we're going to suffer due to a buggy stack for a few years.

Apparently the old stack memcpy's everything in a packet as it floats down the OSI layers. Piss poor. Everyone else just passes a ponter to the packet.

[DaveB]

Yes, but that's because the TCP/IP stack that Microsoft took was at least 10 years old, no wonder current FreeBSD's one wipes the floor. I have high hopes for Vista's TCP/IP, they did not hype it that much so I think the changes are probably true, they are just not sexy to hype.

If you take 10 year old technology and expect it to perform any better than it did before withoutactually doing anything to bring it up to date, then yes, I'd say you are to blame for it.

MS knew they had a crap TCP/IP stack, they just chose not to do anything about it till now.

[AtW]

Ironically, look at my previous post. FreeBSD wipes the floor of 2k3.

Yes, but that's because the TCP/IP stack that Microsoft took was at least 10 years old, no wonder current FreeBSD's one wipes the floor. I have high hopes for Vista's TCP/IP, they did not hype it that much so I think the changes are probably true, they are just not sexy to hype.

[TheMonkey]

TCP/IP was completely rewritten in Vista, in 2k3 it should be about the same as in XP - think minor changes but that's about it. Don't blame MS for having crap TCP/IP - they got it from BSD...

Ironically, look at my previous post. FreeBSD wipes the floor of 2k3.

[AtW]

TCP/IP was completely rewritten in Vista, in 2k3 it should be about the same as in XP - think minor changes but that's about it. Don't blame MS for having crap TCP/IP - they got it from BSD...

[TheMonkey]

2k3 server ain't much better. TCP/IP concurrency is abysmal. Just ported something from c#.Net to good old fashioned C/sockets/pthreads on FreeBSD for a 600% throughput and concurrency performance increase...

[AtW]

Yes TCP/IP stack should be a lot better - WinXP bottlenecks at 7 mbits I think or something like that - MSFT people said this and I've seen it myself.

[VectraMan]

I heard they'd rewritten all the networking. I hope that means it'll cope a bit better with failures, and that all my explorer windows won't turn to "not responding" when some network drive has the bare faced cheek to be temporarily unavailable. I suspect a big chunk of the underlying networking of Windows is still based on LanManager.

[AtW]

What is so fundamentally wrong with XP (other than it's written by MS) that requires you to update to Vista?

64-bit support is not solid - and we do need 64-bits.

Also XPs memory fragmentation is a big problem, this is supposedly done better in Vista.

After some time (year?) Vista will probably be more secure, which is good.

[tim123]

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

What is so fundamentally wrong with XP (other than it's written by MS) that requires you to update to Vista?

ISTM that Vista is bound to have some teething problems, why be the person that does Bill's testing for him, he isn't paying you.

tim

[Joe Black]

This might be what you want TM, it's been 'cranked down' quite a bit so none of that fancy stuff you don't need.

http://www.vistaultimate.com/windows1_screenshots.htm