Microsoft Windows to end with Midori – a step to ‘cloud computing’
Yes, we do say, and it’s backed by Microsoft‘s own words. Hot in the higher layers of IT smack talk is the recent bomb that the army of programmers in Redmond already have planned an operating system platform – an offshoot of the Singularity project, mind you. Can’t keep up with the specifics? We’ll prime you on all things techy, and what Microsoft envisions as their first OS to signal the beginning of a “cloud computing” future.
Managed code – this is what Microsoft‘s post Windows operating system, the so-called Midori, will be made up of, once the Singularity-offshoot project matures enough in the next generation in .NET framework architecture.
The Software Development Times (SD Times) claim that they’ve already laid eyes on internal documents from Microsoft Research and spilled the beans in one huge exclusive.
SD Times takes us through a concept tour through the thoughts and visions of the minds at work in Microsoft Research, and now we’re just beginning to see through the surface of where the Redmond giant’s financial resources are going.
But first, we’ll get you in the tech mood before we dive further into more jargon.
Microsoft Research’s Singularity Project is a one tracked goal to create an operating system built on managed code foundations. Managed code, a prime feature of the .NET framework architecture, allows for the execution of code under a contained virtual environment.
With this technology, memory management becomes a thing of the past (barring hardware, software-to-hardware limitations) and opens up the door to having microkernels execute more efficiently.
Singularity comes with one special idea, of which the project revolves around almost all the time: SIP or the software isolated process (which is also symbolic of the Singularity Project or as some have called, simply SiP).
SIPs allow microkernels to execute tasks and utilizing a single address space, which is shared among all the microkernels executing in the system. This single address space can contain multiple independent SIPs, which differ in constituent data and code structure.
Now enter Midori, a platform which has been singled out to carry the technology researched by Microsoft’s advanced R&D division. According to data extracted by SD Times, Midori will introduce “componentialized” modules arranged over an asynchronous-only architecture. This goes hand-in-hand with Midori’s initial design to be completely integrated into interconnected networks – pitting your system as part of this huge computing cloud.
Concurrency, says the IT online broadsheet, is one of the “core principles” behind Microsoft’s choice of direction for Midori. Local and distributed resources, whether they be processes, applications or virtual or physical devices, will be executed in parallel within the bounds of a distributed-component-based application model.
Applications will even be more tuned for data-driven operations, and Midori can even communicate at a more transparent software to hardware (and vice versa) layer. Dynamic power, memory, and address management are just some of the functions Midori will be capable of executing.
Multi-core processing? You can bet on it, but Midori will handle tasking differently by using process scheduling so that multiple software can run on the processor simultaneously. The evolution of the .NET framework will even allow instructions to be targeted at certain computing resources.
Have an inclination to run code off your 9800GX2? With DirectX 11, that’s possible. With Midori, it’ll be permanent.
There will be changes to how Midori-native applications will be developed, and for you anti-Oslo folks, it’s not good news. APIs, applications, and eventually the developers, will soon have to migrate to the new “constrained” model. More updates as we get them, but you can also get more information at the source we’ve linked below.
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