The title says most of it. Are there any currently produced CPU’s other than those produced by Intel or AMD that can be used to build any kind of computer that can be used for a Windows XP install? Could you make a supercomputer with custom chips run Windows XP if you wanted to without extensive development or modification? No, I do not wish to do this but I am curious if it can be done.
All you need to run XP is an x86 compatible CPU and a PC compatible architecture. AMD and Intel are the big ones, but there are some other manufacturers out there like Transmeta (though I hear they are getting out of the business). I can think of Via, ZF Micro, and National Semiconductor.
It wouldn’t be difficult at all to build a computer that would be x86/PC compatible. It would however be difficult to build a compatible supercomputer that had any significant performance advantage over a regular PC. Intel and AMD already push the limits of how fast we can make all the different little logic gates and such work, so to be faster a supercomputer would have to take advantage of massive parallelization, and in a PC architecture this would leave all of the various CPU bits fighting over the same limited resources.
It would also be fairly easy to make an x86 compatible CPU out of an FPGA though its performance would be nowhere near that of a regular desktop PC. But it could run XP.
Using the software, Virtual PC, you can run Windows on a Macintosh (Motorola CPU). Virtual PC creates an environment that emulates Intel/PC hardware, and then Windows will run as an application withing that environment. Virtual PC makes Windows think that G5 processor is really a Pentium, etc.
Similarly, you could (at least in theory) craft or port a version of VirtualPC to run natively on the world’s fastest supercomputer and then load Windows XP on it, and with that much muscle behind it it ought to run faster in emulation than it does natively on a Pentium or Xeon. (Be a bit like using a Mack truck to haul your groceries home from the supermarket, but it ought to work).
Howyadoin,
Wow, imagine a Beowulf… oh, sorry… wrong board
:smack:
-Rav