I understand that Microsoft is a business and they want to dominate all markets with user interfacing on computers, and that they have to make products faster and cheaper in order to rake in more and more cash; however, why Windows 7 in 2009, then Windows 8 in 2011/2012? XP was 5 years, they kept with 90%+ market share, is it because of the threat of apple we are seeing a step up with Microsoft research and development? Where do these new other Operating Systems fit in with this whole picture? well… probably those nitch markets like netbooks, tablets, TV operating systems, mobile operating systems, aviation, car, and maybe your toaster!
So what operating systems do we have so far, and I’m sure I missed a few:
» Windows Azure operating systems#
» Windows 8 operating systems (they have a team already working on it)
» Windows 9 operating systems (already reported (128Bit O.s?))
» Helios operating systems*
» Barrelfish operating systems**
» Various Linux hybrids operating systems***
#More on Azure:
Microsoft has launched a "cloud operating system" called Windows Azure, or the operating system formerly known as Windows Cloud. Azure is basically a platform for developers of web applications. It combines hosting and tools for managing service delivery and will compete directly with Amazon's EC2 platform.
Developers can build applications using existing Microsoft tools like Visual Studio. Azure can be used to add web capabilities to existing desktop applications or to host completely cloud-based apps. In other words, you could build an online calendar or task management service and host it on Windows Azure, or you could create a desktop calendar that synchronizes with a web calendar. Or you know, something far more creative.
Microsoft unveiled the platform at the Professional Developers Conference today, saying that what's being made available today is just a community preview. More features will be available when the full version is released
*More on Helios:
Another Microsoft Research Operating System: Helios
It seems like Microsoft Research is really busy these days with research operating systems. We had Singularity, a microkernel operating system written in managed code, and late last week we were acquainted with Barrelfish, a "multikernel" system which treats a multicore system as a network of independent cores, using ideas from distributed systems. Now, we have a third contestant, and it's called Helios.
Helios is also a project coming out of Microsoft Research, and it's described as complementary to Barrelfish - in the research sense of the word. Helios is based on Singularity, but introduces support for satellite kernels, remote message passing, and affinity. The research paper written by the team behind Helios describes the operating system as follows:
Helios is an operating system designed to simplify the task of writing, deploying, and tuning applications for heterogeneous platforms. Helios introduces satellite kernels, which export a single, uniform set of OS abstractions across CPUs of disparate architectures and performance characteristics. Access to I/O services such as file systems are made transparent via remote message passing, which extends a standard microkernel message-passing abstraction to a satellite kernel infrastructure. Helios retargets applications to available ISAs by compiling from an intermediate language.
The paper once again goes into quite some detail, a lot of which I simply do not fully understand (I'm looking at you, our dear and loving readers, again). What I do understand is that Helios and Barrelfish complement each other. "Barrelfish focuses on gaining a fine-grained understanding of application requirements when running applications, while the focus of Helios is to export a single-kernel image across heterogenous coprocessors to make it easy for applications to take advantage of new hardware platforms," the paper reads.
What do all these experimental operating systems from Microsoft's research department mean? Well, individually, they mean very little. However, if you take a few steps back from the painting, I think all this could signify that the Redmond giant is looking at the future, a future where computers will have lots of different processing cores, who may not all share the same instruction set - for instance, the GPU who mostly just sits there wasting electrons in most machines.
The Windows NT base system as it exists now is a pretty rock-solid piece of work which can certainly take on the competition, but as time progresses, there comes a moment where NT will no longer be the good choice. I think what we're seeing here is Microsoft hard at work trying to look not just at Windows in 2013, but the operating system in general in 2020
**More on Barrelfish:
Microsoft Releases Model of 'Barrelfish' Operating System
Microsoft has unveiled Barrelfish, a prototype operating system optimized to run on multi-core machines. Created by ETH Zurich and Microsoft Research, Barrelfish uses message passing and a database-like system to share information between cores, making it more efficient than typical OSes, which use shared memory schemes, says Daily Tech.
Barrelfish is one of several multi/many core space projects Microsoft is working on, according to ZDNet. A comprehensive version of the software is expected to be available very soon. Microsoft offers this description of the product:
We are exploring how to structure an OS for future multi- and many-core systems. The motivation is two closely related hardware trends: first, the rapidly growing number of cores, which leads to scalability challenges, and second, the increasing diversity in computer hardware, requiring the OS to manage and exploit heterogeneous hardware resources
***Various Linux hybrids operating systems
A bit more on hybrids
Microsoft: Dual Boot Windows and Linux on Supercomputers: A Hybrid OS Cluster.
As far as Microsoft is concerned, Windows and Linux dual boot scenarios go beyond the desktop, well beyond. The Redmond company's proprietary operating system and the open source platform can also dual boot on supercomputers. Essentially, what Microsoft is proposing involves pushing Windows into what is generally regarded as the natural territory for open source, namely high performance computing. In this regard, the software giant published "A Hybrid OS Cluster Solution" whitepaper in June, designed to present Dual-Boot and Virtualization scenarios involving Windows HPC Server 2008 and Linux Bull Advanced Server for Xeon.
The documentation, authored by Dr. Patrice Calegari, HPC Application Specialist, BULL S.A.S., and Thomas Varlet, HPC Technology Solution Professional, Microsoft, is designed to act as nothing more than a proof of concept. Microsoft has already applauded the integration of Windows HPC Server 2008 with one of the systems in the top 25 supercomputers of the world and is ready to grab more of the high performance computing market as it readies the next iteration of its Windows HPC operating system.
"The choice of the right operating system (OS) for a high performance computing (HPC) cluster can be a very difficult decision for IT departments. And this choice will usually have a big impact on the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the cluster. Parameters like multiple user needs, application environment requirements and security policies are adding to the complex human factors included in training, maintenance and support planning, all leading to associated risks on the final return on investment (ROI) of the whole HPC infrastructure. The goal of this paper is to show that simple techniques are available today to make that choice unnecessary, and keep your HPC infrastructure versatile and flexible", Microsoft revealed in the introduction of the whitepaper.
According to the Redmond company, running several operating systems on the same HPC cluster can be done in two ways. First off a single platform can be selected while the cluster is booting, from a dual boot configuration. In addition, several operating systems can run simultaneously on the same cluster. This involves what Microsoft referred to as a Hybrid Operating System Cluster - where the HPC platforms are sharing computing nodes running concomitantly. The Hybrid OS Cluster Solution whitepaper deals with both types mentioned above
