[Beowulf] small-footprint MS WIn "MinWin"

[Geoff Jacobs]

Peter St. John wrote:
> Brian,
> I think the ratio of performance cost (for the VM) to performance
> capacity (of the core hardware) is tending to zero over the long haul.
> Recall the time when people said "distributed computing would be trivial
> if you could boot unix on every node, ha ha"? It was a reductio ad
> absurdum. Then.
> OTOH what Moore Giveth, Gates Taketh Away. But maybe not entirely with
> the MiniWin.
> Peter
> 
>  
> On 10/22/07, *Brian D. Ropers-Huilman* <brian.ropers.huilman at gmail.com
> <mailto:brian.ropers.huilman at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     On 10/22/07, Robert G. Brown <rgb at phy.duke.edu
>     <mailto:rgb at phy.duke.edu>> wrote:
>     > This in turn moves their system closer to being a suitable host
>     for VMs,
>     > as I think the ideal towards which OS's are moving is the kernel
>     as a VM
>     > host, everything else as a VM guest on top of a device-independent
>     > layer.  At least I hope we are going there.
> 
>     Interesting comment for this particular list. While I'm all in favor
>     of MS "seeing the light," so to speak, your comment on "... everything
>     else as a VM guest on top of a device-independent layer.  At least I
>     hope we are going there." With everything so performance oriented in
>     our world, I just find this comment surprising.

Everybody take a moment to remember how Windows NT was supposed to be an
elegant, microkernel design.

In other words, I have infinite faith in the marketing droids being able
to screw this one, too.

-- 
Geoffrey D. Jacobs

To have no errors
  would be life without meaning
  No struggle, no joy