At its Win32* Professional Developers Conference in San Francisco last week, Microsoft Corp announced that 100 independent software vendors have committed to delivering more than 140 software development tools in versions for Windows NT and that 50 were demonstrated at the conference; the company also announced that it was shipping a 32-bit C++ compiler for NT, using its new N386 32-bit code generation technology, which is claimed to create optimal 32-bit code for the 80386 up; it also has an optimisation technique called colouring that enables the compiler to make more efficient use of the microprocessor’s registers by using heuristically-guided algorithms that determine which variables in the user’s code should be stored in registers; Frame Pointer Elimination reduces the code generated for a C function, or a C++ member function; it comes with the Software Development Kit for NT, and Microsoft really doesn’t want to have to print manuals for it – you have to take the code on a CD-ROM disk that also contains the documentation, and that costs $70, but if you must have the manual, the price is $400; for developent work, you will need at least a 33MHz 80386 machine with 16Mb memory recommended, a CD-ROM drive, and a total of 100Mb available hard disk space for complete installation of the operating system with the tools and compilers.
