Sorry for the typo in the previous post
In this line:
“it would mean Microsoft is ceding the Atom
tablet space to the existing vendors”
Please substitute ARM for Atom, so that it reads:
“it would mean Microsoft is ceding the ARM
tablet space to the existing vendors”
Peter
OSR
Interesting. I had heard there was a lot of work done after Phone 7. I had not realized they completely abandoned the Windows Mobile basis for Phone. Then aga, I operate primarily in the purely embedded world (NOT the desktop-based pseudo-embedded stuff) so it’s not unlikely I am behind on my non-embedded knowledge.
Thanks for the correction.
Greg
— xxxxx@osr.com wrote:
From: xxxxx@osr.com
To: “Windows System Software Devs Interest List”
Subject: RE:[ntdev] Should I start learning Linux driver/os?
Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 11:02:53 -0500 (EST)
Your info is a couple of years out of date, Mr. Dyess.
See the following from Wikipedia:
http: :
“Windows Phone 8 replaces its CE-based architecture … with the Windows NT kernel found on many Windows 8 components.”
—
The news about MSFT “dropping” an operating system is either big news or no news at all. In either case, it’s not the OS that’s important… it’s the platform.
The REAL question is: Does MSFT stay in the ARM Tablet business, or does it stop supporting ARM tablets and place all its support behind Intel’s x86 Atom architecture for future tablet designs?
Taking as given that the above info from Wikipedia is correct (and I won’t confirm or deny that it is) then “killing Windows RT” could simply signal SKU consolidation. It would unify the “glue” pieces for Phone with the mainstream Windows on Tablets, and perhaps save MSFT from a doing separate set of builds.
Sounds like an internal measure to reduce engineering overhead and costs. MAYBE a marketing move to lose the “Windows RT” brand, if they think it’s tainted.
But the overall result in the world? Windows that continues to run on ARM tablets and phones and Windows that runs on x86/x64. In other words, no change to speak of. Zzzzzz.
OTOH, it would be MIGHTY interesting (to me, at least) if Microsoft withdraws from the ARM tablet world entirely. Note I said TABLET, not phone. This would mean that Microsoft either considers tablets unimportant (anybody think this likely?) or is betting very heavily on Intel’s SoFIA (Atom x86) chipset.
THIS would be interesting, because it would mean Microsoft is ceding the Atom tablet space to the existing vendors, is admitting that they’ll never gain parity in apps, and basically marginalizes Windows tablets as “something you use for work only” because they have x86 compatibility.
This would “orphan” the Windows Phone OS as the only Windows ARM platform, and result in the further reduction of apps that are available for that platform (assuming Windows Phone doesn’t one day wake up and find itself world-dominant… another unlikely scenario).
I have no knowledge of Microsoft’s plans in this area. But I find the latter scenario very unlikely. Why get out of the ARM tablet business, tie yourself more closely to Intel, make a risky bet on SoFIA, and deliberately shrink the potential number of users of your ARM software? I don’t see it.
Then again, my history of technology prognostication is famously flawed. I once labeled the the World Wide Web useless and predicted it would never amount to anything.
Peter
OSR
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If it had not been for the emergence of search engines, that
prognostication would have been valid. The existence of massive amounts
of unfindable data is not a resource, but a nightmare. Two things
happened, and they are in a positive feedback loop: (a) search engines
make data accessible anf (b) accessibility of data drives the creation of
more data. The result of this is megascale (or gigascle, or petascale)
search engines, which results in (b) by allowing (a) to scale to
arbitrarily large values. I have friends at google, and the one question
I may not ask them is how many bytes of data google has online. We can
infer it is multiples of petabytes just by doing arithmetic on the sizes
(and/or power consumption) of their facilities, based on public documents
and disclosures (such as their annual report), but this is probably good
for ±n petabytes because we don’t know how efficiently those resources are
consumed. Kind of scary when the error bounds are so massive.
(I just passed 50 years in the field. A couple weeks ago, I went to Radio
Shack and bought an 8GB memory card for about $12. When I started, 50
years ago, I doubt that the sum of all memories on all machines was an
interesting percentage (that is, above 1%) of a gigabyte. The problem
with the SD card is that it is so small I might lose it. That is, I would
lose more memory than the world had, 50 years ago, and while it might be
annoying, I can just go there and buy another card. Or, the best part of
the Good Old Days of Computing is that they are in the past!)
joe
Your info is a couple of years out of date, Mr. Dyess.
See the following from Wikipedia:
http: :
> “Windows Phone 8 replaces its CE-based architecture … with the Windows
> NT kernel found on many Windows 8 components.”
>
> —
>
> The news about MSFT “dropping” an operating system is either big news or
> no news at all. In either case, it’s not the OS that’s important… it’s
> the platform.
>
> The REAL question is: Does MSFT stay in the ARM Tablet business, or does
> it stop supporting ARM tablets and place all its support behind Intel’s
> x86 Atom architecture for future tablet designs?
>
> Taking as given that the above info from Wikipedia is correct (and I won’t
> confirm or deny that it is) then “killing Windows RT” could simply signal
> SKU consolidation. It would unify the “glue” pieces for Phone with the
> mainstream Windows on Tablets, and perhaps save MSFT from a doing separate
> set of builds.
>
> Sounds like an internal measure to reduce engineering overhead and costs.
> MAYBE a marketing move to lose the “Windows RT” brand, if they think it’s
> tainted.
>
> But the overall result in the world? Windows that continues to run on ARM
> tablets and phones and Windows that runs on x86/x64. In other words, no
> change to speak of. Zzzzzz.
>
> OTOH, it would be MIGHTY interesting (to me, at least) if Microsoft
> withdraws from the ARM tablet world entirely. Note I said TABLET, not
> phone. This would mean that Microsoft either considers tablets
> unimportant (anybody think this likely?) or is betting very heavily on
> Intel’s SoFIA (Atom x86) chipset.
>
> THIS would be interesting, because it would mean Microsoft is ceding the
> Atom tablet space to the existing vendors, is admitting that they’ll never
> gain parity in apps, and basically marginalizes Windows tablets as
> “something you use for work only” because they have x86 compatibility.
>
> This would “orphan” the Windows Phone OS as the only Windows ARM platform,
> and result in the further reduction of apps that are available for that
> platform (assuming Windows Phone doesn’t one day wake up and find itself
> world-dominant… another unlikely scenario).
>
> I have no knowledge of Microsoft’s plans in this area. But I find the
> latter scenario very unlikely. Why get out of the ARM tablet business,
> tie yourself more closely to Intel, make a risky bet on SoFIA, and
> deliberately shrink the potential number of users of your ARM software? I
> don’t see it.
>
> Then again, my history of technology prognostication is famously flawed.
> I once labeled the the World Wide Web useless and predicted it would never
> amount to anything.
>
> Peter
> OSR
>
>
>
> —
> NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
>
> Visit the list at: http://www.osronline.com/showlists.cfm?list=ntdev
>
> OSR is HIRING!! See http://www.osr.com/careers
>
> For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
> http://www.osr.com/seminars
>
> To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
> http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
></http:>
> I once labeled the the World Wide Web useless and predicted it would never amount to anything.
…and I originally snubbed x86_64 as something not serious enough to compete with Itanic that I expected, at some point, to gain a wide acceptance…
Anton Bassov
>base while Windows Phone OS is derived (diverged?) from the Windows CE/Windows Mobile code
These inner layers are not so important (they are just like bootstrap loader for WPF-based GUI and apps), and can trivially be replaced by NT kernel by MS at any moment.
SilverLight/WPF is what makes Windows Phone OS a Windows Phone OS.
–
Maxim S. Shatskih
Microsoft MVP on File System And Storage
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com
Wow… Max. I don’t understand your assertions at all. Not even in the abstract.
Isn’t the OS about more than launching WPF GUI and apps? Like, you know, responding to external events, scheduling threads, and managing power utilization?
Wow… I don’t understand this either. My wife’s Windows 7 system has the Silverlight run-time installed on it, and she runs the occasional WPF app. Does that mean she’s running Windows Phone?
Architecturally, I could give a shit about whether the interface is tiles or tools. Whatever. If you ask ME, what makes a Phone OS a Phone OS is the ability for it to respond to button pushes, keep a network connection alive, and do it all day long while only sipping from the battery. And THAT’s about the underlying goo in the OS, not Silverlight/WPF.
Peter
OSR
> Wow… Max. I don’t understand your assertions at all. Not even in the abstract.
Isn’t the OS about more than launching WPF GUI and apps? Like, you know, responding to external
events, scheduling threads, and managing power utilization?
My statement is that most of the Windows Phone development ecosystem will not notice if the next WP kernel will become NT and no more CE. More so, MS can switch to Linux there (ha-ha-ha!) without disturbing neither user nor developer community.
The developers are using .NET (or WinRT) layers anyway, and (especially the phone developers) do not care much about anything but the fancy UI.
And, with threads, .NET 4 introduced async/await stuff (language-embedded coroutines), which allows the developers to avoid using threads and still have responsive UI. This stuff is IIRC also in WinRT.
installed on it, and she runs the occasional WPF app. Does that mean she’s running Windows >Phone?
Not, but the vice versa is true. WP - at least the old WP7 - is Silverlight.
WP7 apps are Silverlight apps.
Architecturally, I could give a shit about whether the interface is tiles or tools. Whatever.
Are you the WP developer? The bulk of the task these developers are facing is to implement the UI (with some HTTP-based networking usually). So, they do give a shit about the interface. And the kernel itself - for them - is some “black box”, knowledge of which is not necessary for their tasks.
THAT’s about the underlying goo in the OS, not Silverlight/WPF.
From a developer perspective, frameworks/APIs/libraries/tools is what make the platform.
–
Maxim S. Shatskih
Microsoft MVP on File System And Storage
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com
Maxim, Windows Phone switched from CE to NT with WP8. That transition already happened.
From: Maxim S. Shatskihmailto:xxxxx
Sent: ?Monday?, ?December? ?02?, ?2013 ?7?:?56? ?AM
To: ntdevmailto:xxxxx
> Wow… Max. I don’t understand your assertions at all. Not even in the abstract.
>
> Isn’t the OS about more than launching WPF GUI and apps? Like, you know, responding to external
>events, scheduling threads, and managing power utilization?
My statement is that most of the Windows Phone development ecosystem will not notice if the next WP kernel will become NT and no more CE. More so, MS can switch to Linux there (ha-ha-ha!) without disturbing neither user nor developer community.
The developers are using .NET (or WinRT) layers anyway, and (especially the phone developers) do not care much about anything but the fancy UI.
And, with threads, .NET 4 introduced async/await stuff (language-embedded coroutines), which allows the developers to avoid using threads and still have responsive UI. This stuff is IIRC also in WinRT.
>installed on it, and she runs the occasional WPF app. Does that mean she’s running Windows >Phone?
Not, but the vice versa is true. WP - at least the old WP7 - is Silverlight.
WP7 apps are Silverlight apps.
> Architecturally, I could give a shit about whether the interface is tiles or tools. Whatever.
Are you the WP developer? The bulk of the task these developers are facing is to implement the UI (with some HTTP-based networking usually). So, they do give a shit about the interface. And the kernel itself - for them - is some “black box”, knowledge of which is not necessary for their tasks.
>THAT’s about the underlying goo in the OS, not Silverlight/WPF.
From a developer perspective, frameworks/APIs/libraries/tools is what make the platform.
–
Maxim S. Shatskih
Microsoft MVP on File System And Storage
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com
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xxxxx@osr.com wrote:
It also implies the Windows Phone OS is something that’s entirely different from Windows RT. Does anybody who knows a Windows OS architecture really believe that’s likely?
Through Windows Phone 7 that most DEFINITELY was the case, because
Windows Phone used a CE kernel, not an NT kernel.
With Windows Phone 8, I believe they are all just #ifdefed versions of
the same code base.
–
Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
Same kernel.
-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Tim Roberts
Sent: Monday, December 02, 2013 9:51 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re: [ntdev] Should I start learning Linux driver/os?
xxxxx@osr.com wrote:
It also implies the Windows Phone OS is something that’s entirely different from Windows RT. Does anybody who knows a Windows OS architecture really believe that’s likely?
Through Windows Phone 7 that most DEFINITELY was the case, because Windows Phone used a CE kernel, not an NT kernel.
With Windows Phone 8, I believe they are all just #ifdefed versions of the same code base.
–
Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
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Thanks, Ken, for putting that unambiguously in the public record. Very helpful.
Peter
OSR