Microsoft provides clarifications on Win11 specs, says it is evaluating in adding 7th gen CPUs and Ryzen 1 series CPUs

[StDragon]

40 minutes ago, leadeater said:

And there are hypervisor memory encryption and isolation options as well, though you generally want CPU support for those.

Seems that's handled by the Secure Memory Encryption (SME) instruction set. I'm not sure if Server 2022 supports that or not. OTOH, looks that if you enable Transparent SME (TSME) in BIOS, all contents in RAM is encrypted and thus agnostic to any hypervisor or VM running on the host; though I suspect some performance penalty perhaps as a result of this catch-all.
 

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, StDragon said:

Seems that's handled by the Secure Memory Encryption (SME) instruction set. I'm not sure if Server 2022 supports that or not. OTOH, looks that if you enable Transparent SME (TSME) in BIOS, all contents in RAM is encrypted and thus agnostic to any hypervisor or VM running on the host; though I suspect some performance penalty perhaps as a result of this catch-all.

EPYC has hardware features in it's security engine that take pretty much all that penalty away, Intel has/will have it too (soon if not now). At least on the VMware side of things there's just a little extra CPU cycles cost but latency and throughput is mostly unaffected, exception being extremely high end NVMe and you still get more than good enough performance anyway.

[StDragon]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

EPYC has hardware features in it's security engine that take pretty much all that penalty away, Intel has/will have it too (soon if not now). At least on the VMware side of things there's just a little extra CPU cycles cost but latency and throughput is mostly unaffected, exception being extremely high end NVMe and you still get more than good enough performance anyway.

Apparently this is the same SME that's in the Ryzen Pro 3000 series.

 

Quote

"From a more technical perspective, the answer is that the Ryzen Pro line includes AMD Memory Guard, a transparent system memory encryption feature that appears to be equivalent to the AMD SME (Secure Memory Encryption) in Epyc server CPUs. Although AMD's own press materials don't directly relate the two technologies, their description of Memory Guard—"a transparent memory encryption (OS and application independent DRAM encryption) providing a cryptographic AES encryption of system memory"—matches Epyc's SME exactly.
 

AMD Memory Guard is not, unfortunately, available in standard Ryzen 3000 desktop CPUs. If you want to build your own Ryzen PC with full memory encryption from scratch, you're out of luck for now." -Ars Technica

 

So it would seem EPYC has both SME and TSME whereas only Ryzen Pro has TSME?

 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, StDragon said:

So it would seem EPYC has both SME and TSME whereas only Ryzen Pro has TSME?

Don't really know much about Ryzen Pro, I did know that it supported that though but nothing else other than it did.

[Hawx]

FYI, There's a pretty good interview with David Weston, partner director of enterprise and OS security at Microsoft, that goes over the reasoning behind the requirements:

Windows 11: Understanding the system requirements and the security benefits - TechRepublic

[StDragon]

22 minutes ago, Hawx said:

FYI, There's a pretty good interview with David Weston, partner director of enterprise and OS security at Microsoft, that goes over the reasoning behind the requirements:

Windows 11: Understanding the system requirements and the security benefits - TechRepublic

Very good article, worth the read! Wish we had this transparency earlier, but better late than never I suppose.

 

Quote

"While 7th generation and AMD Zen CPUs have the hardware features, they have what Microsoft described to us as 'limited support', so one of the things the Windows Insider releases of Windows 11 will show is exactly which of those earlier processors will deliver a good enough experience to be supported."

The only outstanding question I have is this; what's the difference between 7th and 8th gen that matters? Both have MBEC. So what else could it be?

[LAwLz]

31 minutes ago, Hawx said:

FYI, There's a pretty good interview with David Weston, partner director of enterprise and OS security at Microsoft, that goes over the reasoning behind the requirements:

Windows 11: Understanding the system requirements and the security benefits - TechRepublic

I think that was a pretty good interview and exactly the type of info that should have been released the same day as the event.

I still don't like the answers though. Not only because Microsoft keep giving conflicting answers (in this interview David says the CPU floor is because of feature requirements like MBEC but on Twitter just a couple of days ago he said the CPU floor was not set for feature reasons).

I also don't like that when asked about TPM they go to stuff like BitLocker and how Windows Hello for Business uses it to store the private key, because those things are not important to Home users, yet the Home version still has those requirements. Why require a hardware feature that you are artificially blocking users from using?

 

Hearing things like how they are not worried about the CPU requirements because businesses on a 3-4 year replacement cycle will be fine does not really help home users. I get that home users aren't Microsoft's target demographic anymore, but it still sucks because to me it's like Microsoft saying "we do not care about you home users, we tailor or product to enterprise customers".

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Not only because Microsoft keep giving conflicting answers (in this interview David says the CPU floor is because of feature requirements like MBEC but on Twitter just a couple of days ago he said the CPU floor was not set for feature reasons).

Also I heard that the CPU restrictions aren't actually being enforce in the Preview Channel builds at all, have you heard similar? Seems to be a lot of people being able to install it without any workarounds at all no trouble.

[Forbidden Wafer]

13 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Also I heard that the CPU restrictions aren't actually being enforce in the Preview Channel builds at all, have you heard similar? Seems to be a lot of people being able to install it without any workarounds at all no trouble.

They said it would be the case. But they won't get the final build and will have to manually reinstall Windows 10.

[StDragon]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said: I get that home users aren't Microsoft's target demographic anymore, but it still sucks because to me it's like Microsoft saying "we do not care about you home users, we tailor or product to enterprise customers".

 

lol, that burns.

 

In defense however, 8th gen was launched in 2017. So let's say 2018, that's still 7 years past that until 2025 when Windows 10 is EOLed. Or, you can upgrade to 11.

 

And if you're on 7th gen, you should be able to enable Memory Isolation in Windows 10 for added security without much (if any) performance hit. So with that and fTPM security should be near on par with Windows 11.

[staticpage]

On 6/28/2021 at 2:16 PM, TVwazhere said:

Well 4790k, we had a good run. I'll love you always

Yep and no parts to buy so I'll just mostly ignore all this. I'm not using an os that requires cutting edge parts all the X99 cpus i have work great.

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

Also I heard that the CPU restrictions aren't actually being enforce in the Preview Channel builds at all, have you heard similar? Seems to be a lot of people being able to install it without any workarounds at all no trouble.

Yep, it's as @Forbidden Wafer said.

You are able to install the preview build, but once they hit the last build before the release you will simply not get any more updates and you will have to wipe your drive and install Windows 10 again.

Just further goes to show that there is no technical limitation that prevents it from working. It's just a limit Microsoft are imposing because they (allegedly, according to themselves) want to give people the best experience.

 

[StDragon]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

It's just a limit Microsoft are imposing because they (allegedly, according to themselves) want to give people the best experience.

if I have a discrete GPU, then  em. Now if they're talking about iGPU UI experience, maybe 8th gen is the line?

I know at this point I'm beating a dead horse here, but I need it kick it some more. If you have an 7th gen with a DX12 dGPU, I don't see any reason to not let it run Windows 11. 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

On 6/28/2021 at 5:28 PM, Kisai said:

Laptops with 2-cores and 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of disc space should never have been built, but I was still seeing them issued as "new" in 2020. So if Microsoft had made that a requirement I'd be like "makes sense".

*waves from my dual core i7 7500U laptop that's perfectly fine and responses for web browsing and other 'bumming around on the internet while on the couch' things*

[WhitetailAni]

On 6/28/2021 at 4:28 PM, Kisai said:

Laptops with 2-cores and 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of disc space should never have been built

No, they're fine. My mom uses one for teaching and she doesn't have problems with it.

But dual-core laptops with 4GB or less of RAM and sub-128GB of eMMC for storage should cease to exist in a pool of nothingness.

[Tieox]

6 minutes ago, FakeKGB said:

No, they're fine. My mom uses one for teaching and she doesn't have problems with it.

But dual-core laptops with 4GB or less of RAM and sub-128GB of eMMC for storage should cease to exist in a pool of nothingness.

Did you get asked why photoshop/games/massive office project/windows would not run on those bloody tiny little Atom netbooks from years gone?

 

Nothing gave me more satisfaction then getting someone a proper laptop, and showing one of these hateful piles of e-waste my favorite hammer.  

[WhitetailAni]

Just now, Tieox said:

Did you get asked why photoshop/games/massive office project/windows would not run on those bloody tiny little Atom netbooks from years gone?  

No, because it had a Core i5-7200U with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SATA SSD.

She also doesn't play games or use Photoshop. The heaviest use it gets is Zoom with Google Slides.

1 minute ago, Tieox said:

Nothing gave me more satisfaction then getting someone a proper laptop, and showing one of these hateful piles of e-waste my favorite hammer.  

Can't deny that smashing up crap stuff is fun. I found a broken netbook in a recycling can once and brought it home. With the permission of my dad I stuck it in a bag and punted it off the highest part of our roof.

Did it a few more times before all that was left was bits.

[leadeater]

8 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Yep, it's as @Forbidden Wafer said.

You are able to install the preview build, but once they hit the last build before the release you will simply not get any more updates and you will have to wipe your drive and install Windows 10 again.

Just further goes to show that there is no technical limitation that prevents it from working. It's just a limit Microsoft are imposing because they (allegedly, according to themselves) want to give people the best experience.

I have a really strong feeling then that the CPU restrictions will not be enforced on Enterprise edition either, just a wild guess but really would not be surprised at all. If they are going to allow exemptions for "specialized systems" I can see that being extending to Enterprise edition by just simply not enforcing it at all.

 

I'll test it out once Windows 11 goes RTM.

[RejZoR]

I checked and my Atom Z series netbook has TPM 2.0. But you know, not enough coz we need bunch of stupid other extensions. I literally have 3 TPM 2.0 enabled systems of which only 1 will be eligible for Windows 11. LMAO. What a joke.

[Kilrah]

I have an Atom tablet that would be fine except the UEFI is 32bit only...

[linkboy]

5 hours ago, leadeater said:

I have a really strong feeling then that the CPU restrictions will not be enforced on Enterprise edition either, just a wild guess but really would not be surprised at all. If they are going to allow exemptions for "specialized systems" I can see that being extending to Enterprise edition by just simply not enforcing it at all.

 

I'll test it out once Windows 11 goes RTM.

 

If they do that, that version will pretty much be the most pirated version of Windows ever. 

[jagdtigger]

2 minutes ago, linkboy said:

 

If they do that, that version will pretty much be the most pirated version of Windows ever. 

And this why they never released the ISO....

Checked my machines, grand total of 2 supported, its so bad its not even funny.....

[RejZoR]

9 hours ago, Tieox said:

Did you get asked why photoshop/games/massive office project/windows would not run on those bloody tiny little Atom netbooks from years gone?

 

Nothing gave me more satisfaction then getting someone a proper laptop, and showing one of these hateful piles of e-waste my favorite hammer.  

People bash tiny netbooks too much. I had original ACER Aspire One with Atom N270 and it was pretty useful for what it was meant for. Light work in compact format that can run for hours. I had the model with 160GB HDD and I then stuffed Intel X25-M 80GB in it and it was amazingly responsive, cooler and battery last much longer. I now have ASUS Transformer with Atom Z8350 and it's a pretty sparky little beast. Only thing slowing this one down is eMMC storage it uses really and I can't replace/upgrade like in Aspire One. Still, I can't imagine using anything else instead of it. Touch display, detachable and rotatable display is just so versatile. I use it to watch movies and TV in bed and it's working great for that.

 

I even ran Cinebench on it and it did the scene surprisingly fast given it's a low power quad core with little cache and lower clocks. If there was a need to render a scene on it and you had nothing but that netbook with quad core Atom, it's perfectly doable. Hell, for a while I was even compiling a list of games that are playable on Aspire One back in the day and there were actually quite some games that ran quite fine on it.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, linkboy said:

If they do that, that version will pretty much be the most pirated version of Windows ever. 

Well for reasons I'm not going to say, it already should be or already is.

[suicidalfranco]

11 hours ago, Tieox said:

Did you get asked why photoshop/games/massive office project/windows would not run on those bloody tiny little Atom netbooks from years gone?

 

Snip

 

LNothing gave me more satisfaction then getting someone a proper laptop, and showing one of these hateful piles of e-waste my favorite hammer.  

Hey! Those things were the easiest way to play Dofus at school back in my days.

Gave me the time of my life