My own observation is that it comes down to politics more then
technology.
Microsoft promised support to AMD for x64 when it came out and pulled
back at the last minute for two reasons.
They haven't really pulled back so much as delayed. That is hardly
anything new for Microsoft, I can't even remember the last time they
shipped something on time! The 6-9 month delay is fairly standard for
their products, no need for any conspiracy theories there!
1) Microsoft still needs Intel for sales as Intel still has a
veritable monopoly on consumer systems although they would very much
like this not to be the case very soon. So a bone was kicked in hte
direction on Intel to allow them to claim 64 bit Windows on Itanium.
Intel needs Microsoft much more than Microsoft needs Intel.
2) Microsoft is in the process off revamping everything around Rights
Denial
( NGSCB or Palladium if you will ), Microsoft DRM, etc. and really
wants this so that it can pander to the likes of the music and movie
monopoly slobs at the expense of it's customer base who you get the
feeling that they think are stupid enough to believe that it's for
their benefit.
Minor FWIW, but NGSCB/Palladium/La Grande/name-of-day actually DOES
have some very beneficial aspects to it. The DRM stuff is really only
one small portion of the whole deal, but of course it's the ONLY part
that ever gets any coverage in the geek-sream media (I don't think any
of it gets coverage in main-stream media :> ). The ability to run a
service in it's own 'sandbox' of a sorts is a very good thing from a
sever security standpoint.
Of course, the goal of the DRM stuff is most certainly not to help the
users, but rather to attract the media companies to release their
wares using Microsoft DRM. What better way to keep people using your
product than to REQUIRE the use of your product to view certain
content?
competing against. I think it's interesting to note that both AMD64
based chips and Itanium and all future Intel processors support the NX
( No execute ) register. This is one way to allow NGSCB to lock out
"illegal" applications and for Microsoft and others to control the
list of legal applications that can run in the processor. Do you
What in the hell are you talking about? First off, the NX bit is just
that, a bit in the page table. It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with
applications! It does exactly ONE thing and one thing alone, it marks
pages in the page table as executable or non-executable. This is a
feature that is implemented in many (most?) other architectures out
there but has been sadly lacking in x86 (err, it's implemented in
IA32, but only in a rather ass-backwards manner that can not be easily
used by most operating systems).
It's quite unclear whether Intel will support this feature in their
upcoming P4 "Prescott" chips or not. One recent third-party report
was quoted as saying that they will, however several other recent
reports have Intel saying that they the Prescott does not support the
NX bit and they have no plans on doing so.
suppose this was the price of admission the Microsoft wanted from the
processor people? I think the Intel got the better end of the deal in
that case.
Both AMD and Intel have included the hardware required for Microsoft's
NGSCB in their new or upcoming processors. Nothing in ANY of this
hardware has any connection at all to locking out applications or
operating systems.
)