OS in the processor
By ReyM21
@ReyM21 (281)
Philippines
February 19, 2007 9:54pm CST
Is it possible that the OS (Windows, Unix, etc.) of a PC computer be embeded or built-in in its microprocessor chip (Intel, AMD)? So its hard disk will only contain all other applications/ softwares (w/o its OS). I don't know how experts would do that, but I think it is more secured to hacking, viruses, spywares, etc. Am I right?
1 response
@aiguy01 (588)
• United States
20 Feb 07
Not currently. The amount of onboard cache memory on a chip is orders of magnitudes too small to hold a large operating system.
But IBM has just announced that they have made a chip breakthough that will allow onboard cache memory to quadruple in size in 2008. Still not enough for an OS but with the ability to cache much larger portions of the OS on the chip we are a step closer and the chips will run a lot faster too because of the reduction in the number of slower memory fetches outside the cache..
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