Microsoft Predictions for 2008: Games group housecleaning continues (Microsoft in 2008: 10 Predictions)

TalkBack 33 of 116:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

YES YES

My explination was an over simplification because I thought I was explaining somthing to someone who fail to see a concept.

"Windows 3 allowed the ability to switch between several processes, and each process could hand control over to the OS, which would then pass control to the next program. The OS divided time into "slices" and tried to keep the distribution of the time spent by each program fairly equal. However, the OS was sill at the mercy of the program if the program didn't give up control of the CPU."

A to Z is A to Z no matter what order you go into. Instead of finishing a list of instructions one after the other, you finish them in mixed fashion depending on several factors. Simulated multitasking. Its not doing many things at once its just skipping around from thing to thing. I get this and all the other points you make on the subject are correct but mute in terms of the current disscusion. The thing you did say that needs to be addressed is

Threads. Yes this is a capability to have a process run instructions on separate processors. The problem lies not in there existence but in how Windows handles them.

A thread is a thread. There's no guarantee that The two or four threads from my software will get run at the same time on different cores. To windows there just threads, all vying for a "slice" of time on a processor. If you want to get into the nitty gritty, using Java, C#, VB.NET, Ruby, you can actually come across situations where multi threading on a multicore processor will impede the performance because the threads will want to get run simultaneously and the entire process will wait for each thread to get its time.

One of vistas few credits is it does a much better job than xp handling the "logistics" of threads, and many system locks due to the os expending system resources sorting out which thread goes next have been removed. But why should multi threaded software be sharing time with system operations that most people don't even no exsist or low cpu intensive tasks. Vista can run on one core fine, single thread programs can share it ie the firefoxes the word ect.

Why is windows handling processes with multiply threads like two competing processes. Microsoft needs to do some major refinement when it comes to how each multi threaded program gets prioritized because most processes don't start run and end as mulit threaded entities. And much of the gain from them being multithreaded is negated by them waiting for all there threads to come to a point of closure and move on.

And finally the task of writing a multithreaded program in which the threads share the program workload equally is very difficult. Problems arise because the code may not run the same way each time. There is no guarantee on how windows is going to prioritize and run your threads. Non repeatable error tend to pop up alot. Unless Microsoft come up with a standardized Multi threaded priority scheme, developers are going to have an increasingly difficult time utilizing threads in this manner. 99 percent of multi threaded software around is organized in a heavy lifting this thread, stupid stuff that thread fashion because of this fact....... That and threads were never designed for parallel processing to begin with.

Posted by: usmcdvldg@...   Posted on: 12/19/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• The True Costs of Virtual Server Solutions VMware In an economic environment that is repeatedly heralding the message "do ... Download Now
• Key Strategies for Federal Agencies - Safe and Cost Effective Migration for Legacy Hardware GovConnection The federal government has mandated that federal agencies reduce energy ... Download Now
• Why Isn't Server Virtualization Saving Us More? A Few Small Changes May Dramatically Increase Your Efficiency VMware Companies have rapidly adopted server virtualization over the past few ... Download Now