Joe Beda - What hardware will Longhorn/Avalon need?

Yeah, so what hardware will Longhorn/Avalon need??? Is 64MB a requirement for a Tier 1 experience, or is that subject to change?  Please change the subject to "Joe Beda mentions a specific graphics card and suggests Longhorn might just possibly work with it, but don't hold him to that."

Also, have you considered "Presentation Manager" as a name for the desktop compositing engine?  Now that you guys are working with IBM again, I think it's fair game.  LOL

Karim wrote:

Yeah, so what hardware will Longhorn/Avalon need??? [snip]

Also, have you considered "Presentation Manager" as a name for the desktop compositing engine?  Now that you guys are working with IBM again, I think it's fair game.  LOL

After WinHEC, I'll feel more comfortable speaking publically about our required and recommended hardware.  I'll point this thread to our main PM in that area and maybe she'll be fine with talking to this early.

As for Presentation Manager -- I hadn't heard that yet.  That name hasn't come up in our discussions but it would be pretty funny!

when MS supports 64 bit....that is when i purchase my new terminal

interesting watch

Well, mentioning a single graphics card is way better than the good old "I cannot comment on features or requirements of upcoming Microsoft Products". We're moving in the right direction here.

/Lars.

Surely Avalon isn't really needed for the server version? A Windows server should be able to run on a low spec graphics card (as low as 2MB or even lower). Most of the time, you probably wouldn't even need to turn the server monitor on but use Remote Desktop.

There should be a Windows without all the bells and whistles (except for services like IIS, Active Directory, Indigo)

It probably wouldn't even run on machines that run NT/9x - what options do those users have (without upgrading their hardware)? Not all servers require the latest Pentium/AMD processor (i.e. like file servers, which only really need fast SCSI hard drives).

A server version that is specific would be good (i.e. you may only want an email or proxy server and not need the extras) - otherwise you are not getting good value for money.

That's true. Servers don't need the visual googaw that the client-side versions need.

We haven't started talking about the Longhorn server side yet. Almost everything in Longhorn we've discussed has been client versions only.

Indigo is probably the main thing for the server. All Longhorn client will really need is the client tools (and maybe a mini-server for testing).

I assume Indigo is also client independent - i.e. non-Windows clients can 'consume' the web service.

I think RSS (or its successor) would probably be a good thing to somehow integrate (as long as you kept to the spec)

sbc wrote:

Surely Avalon isn't really needed for the server version?

Even though Avalon isn't going to be key to most servers, I think that it is necessary to have a base level of the platform available all the time.  It doesn't have to be pretty and it doesn't have to be super fast, but applications have to work.  I think that there is something to be said for a Windows application runs on Windows whatever the version.

Win2k3 server comes with hardware acceleration turned off by default (to minimize crashes in the video driver).  If we do the same thing moving forward (I have no idea one way or the other) you can bet that we will make sure that applications still run.  All of Avalon graphics has a software fallback.

Beyond that, you can do cool things with AValon that don't stress the hardware and aren't "cool flying stuff".  We are also a new UI toolkit and framework.  Say what you will about cool graphics, but even a server can use good UI on occasion (if you aren't the the type to do everything on the command line).

Also, we want to make the remoting (Remote Desktop and Terminal Services) work super well with Avalon.  In that case the parts of Avalon that do stress the graphics hardware (the composition process and all drawing operations) will happen on the client machine.  This means that Avalon will be running on the server but the heavy graphics lifting can be done by the client.

Joe

In this article on the WinNETMag site it says that the even the lowest tier of Aero needs a 32MB 3D graphics card. Why can't it run on a lower spec one (i.e. 8MB), or even on a 2D one? Where would this leave laptops with only 8MB graphics RAM (or even ones with 16MB)? I suppose they would have to stick with XP (although by the time Longhorn comes out, the laptops will be upgraded - if they can afford to).

Or is that only if you wish to use Aero (as the article also says there is a fallback to Win2k UI - which surely should work even on 4MB cards)?

sbc wrote:

Why can't it run on a lower spec one (i.e. 8MB), or even on a 2D one?

...

Or is that only if you wish to use Aero (as the article also says there is a fallback to Win2k UI - which surely should work even on 4MB cards)?

The 32MB DX9 generation card is what is necessary to get a Windows "Longhorn" logo and run with the Aero experience.  However, we will run on hardware that is less capable than that.  Specifically for laptops we will have a way to optimize for battery life.

If we have less than a DX7 card or if we run out of memory we can always fall back to software rendering.  Everything that we render can be done in software also.  This is necessary for things like printing or rendering to a system memory bitmap.

hi, very nice..