IBM POWER Event - March 31, 2004

[thatwendigo]

Did I miss a pressrelease somewhere? What's rumored is that the Xbox 2 developer boxes run an operating system based on a modified NT kernel.. That's not even near the same as "Windows will run fine on them" in the future. Even if Microsoft makes a full fleged Windows distribution for POWER/PowerPCs (something that's extremely unlikely) every application will have to be either recompiled or emulated. Emulated IA-32 on PPC is not what emulated IA-32 is on IA-64 (Itanium), and there's not much thir party support for that platform despite that giants like Intel, HP and Microsoft have been pushing for that plaform for years.

Actually, you're wrong on a couple of points. Microsoft already has a functioning implementation of Windows for PowerPC, and even went so far as to release the NT system for MIPS RS, DEC Alpha, PowerPC and x86 as of versions 3.51 and 4.0. The reason this could be done is that they created something called the HAL, or hardware abstraction layer, which acted as a go-between for the kernel and application and the actual platform the software was being run on.

Wikiwpedia says this about the NT kernel:

Microsoft hired a group of developers from Digital Equipment Corporation to build NT, and many elements reflect earlier DEC experience with VMS and RSX-11. NT uses a highly layered design, with the hardware hidden from the NT kernel by a hardware abstraction layer, and most operating system API functionality provided by API-specific interface modules that present specific functionality such as the Win32, OS/2, DOS and POSIX system call compatibility environments. Windows NT was the first operating system to use Unicode internally.​

Think that this is history? It's not. The current Windows XP core also makes use of HAL, though mostly as a way to manage the digital polyglot of manufacturers that provide parts. Rumors also place the XBox2 SDKs on Apple G5s with a specially modified Windows kernel, which would make it pretty clear that you could run the OS on the PowerPC still. Apple keeps the x86 version of OS X around, and you can bet Microsoft has code that could run on POWER/PowerPC if that market segment looks like it could take off. They're all about making money, after all.

Also, it's Microsoft. Like they care that you have to shell out money to replace your software...

 

[Henriok]

Rumors also place the XBox2 SDKs on Apple G5s with a specially modified Windows kernel, which would make it pretty clear that you could run the OS on the PowerPC still.

I have no reason to believe that Microsoft can make a new version of Windows to be run on a PowerPC platform. They obviously have done it before and it wouldn't be too hard to do it again, just like it wouldnät be too hard for Apple to do the same for x86. the question at hand is if the will do it. That's what i deem highly unlikey.

Porting a modified kernel and some libraries like DirectX and drivers just to make the basic operating system for a very specified platform like XBox Next is a project on a very different level than doing a complete port of an entire desktop operating system to a new platform. And I see absolutely no point for MS to do so.

And there's thrid party apps and drivers...