Windows won't work with Multi core processors?

Windows and existing Microsoft programming languages work just fine with one to four-processor cores. But when 8, 16, 64, 80 core client machines become the normal processors — in the not-so-distant future — will Windows, C#, Visual Basic and other Microsoft applications be able to keep up ?

The answer is NO. Microsoft is fully aware of this fact and is starting to make noise about how to deal with the situation.

At the recent "Future in Review" conference, Microsoft officials told attendees that the next releases of Windows will have to be “fundamentally different” in order to accommodate future multicore machines.

So what exactly does Microsoft mean by "fundamentally different" ?

Carlson, director of technical strategy at Microsoft said that Windows Vista, is "designed to run on 1, 2, maybe 4 processors," reoferring to the fact that quad-core processrs are now available from Intel and are on the way from Advanced Micro Devices.

"In 10 to 15 years' time we're going to have incredible computing power. The challenge will be bringing that ecosystem up that knows how to write programs," Carlson said. Windows Vista is designed to take advantage of multiple processing threads, but not 16 threads. And application developers are even further behind in making the transition to the multicore world.

Intel and AMD have not confirmed processor plans beyond eight cores, and only in theory at that. Intel has demonstrated an 80-core processor, but that's just a research project that can't run conventional code. But Carlson appears convinced that he and other software developers should start getting ready for that world.