Microsoft support for Multi-core

[Vishal_T_Intel]

What is Microsoft roadmap/direction on Intel Multi-core?

Do the Microsoft server products such as IIS, SQL Server etc need to be re-coded and recompiled to take advantage of multi-core?http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17682&ch=infotech&sc=&pg=1

The article indicates that for dual-core processors the OS (Win and Mac OS X) can effectively split applications. But when it comes to 4, 8, 16 or more cores the apps themselves need to be modified to gain performance. Hence WinXP or Vista might do well (not best) with Dual-core but not with a Quad-core.

How do the software products distinguish between multi-core and multi-processor?

More thoughts on the above questions would be helpful,

Thanks,

Vishal

[TimP]

This covers a very wide range of topics, and I think you're headed in a different direction from me. Of particular interest, potentially big steps taken in this direction by Microsoft this year include OpenMP and MPI support.

[jimdempseyatthecove]

This entirely depends on how the system is configured and what it is used for.

As for a power desktop user.

If the motherboard is configured for on-board video (most off the shelf systems are) then it is not unusual for a graphics intensive application to suck up 100% of one of the cores during high activity. Thus under those circumstances, a Dual Core system might yield 1 Core worth of application processing capacity. Inserting a decent video card would reclaim the 2nd processing capacity. If you doubt this, find a dual core system using on-board video. Issue Start | Run | CMD and in the command window issue

DIR C: /S

Do this while a Task Manager is charting the processor utilization. This generally pegs one ot the CPUs. Now, install a video card and disable the on-board video (or find someone who has done this), and repeat the test. You will likely see under 1% utilization.

With a Quad Core system using on-board video might not be a bad choice.

Jim Dempsey