Vijay Barve: Microsoft Prepares For Post-Windows Era With 'Midori'

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Microsoft Prepares For Post-Windows Era With 'Midori'

The operating system is being designed from the ground up to support Internet-based computing and multicore architectures.

By Paul McDougall, InformationWeek, July 31 2008, 1230 hrs

Microsoft researchers are developing a new operating system that's designed from the ground up to support Internet-based computing and multicore architectures and which could one day replace the company's storied Windows franchise.

The operating system, which currently goes by the development name Midori, is being built to solve problems that are beyond the scope of Windows, a so-called fat OS that was first developed before the Internet came into widespread use and most PCs had only a single processor.

It's possible that Midori is being designed for use in cloud computing scenarios, in which business applications reside on centralized servers and are accessed through the Web. Microsoft researchers also are building the OS with an eye to achieving better performance on multicore PCs, company documents show. To date, developers have had little success creating software that's able to fully harness the power of computers that feature two or more cores on a single chip.

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