Purpose and Scope of Document
Microsoft is developing an advanced implementation of its Scalable Windows operating system called Windows NT. Windows NT is a robust, fully featured operating system which provides fundamental compatibility with Windows. (For more information on Windows NT see the attached Windows NT overview). Microsoft and Intel have cooperated to define a multi-processor system architecture that is optimal for Windows NT. This document describes the architecture of multi-processor machines best suited to run Windows NT. Windows NT, like any portable, well-structured operating system, can be adapted to a wide variety of hardware platforms, including today's machines. However, to achieve the best performance and to avoid significant porting and testing efforts, new multi-processor system designs should follow the architecture set forth in this document.
Windows NT will be portable and secure. It will support multi-processor (and uni-processor) machines. It will be available in versions sufficiently standard to support binary distribution of the operating system for standard machine configurations. Such distribution will be key to gaining wide-spread use of multi-processor machines. This current document presents only the high level architecture of such machines.
This document describes Windows NT hardware needs in a general fashion, but with emphasis on the 386 and i486. It should be noted the Windows NT is a portable system capable of running on other architectures.
Machines that conform to the architecture described here will require the least (possibly no) adaptation of Windows NT and will run Windows NT the most efficiently.