cliffordcooley
Posts: 13,141 +6,441
If I may be so bold as to say the OS has to come first. There will not be any 128-bit applications until after the OS is released.So they can't make Windows 9 128-bit as there isn't enough software around to take advantage so it's the same old 32/64-bit CPU mix support.
Once there is a 128-bit OS, all 32-bit applications will likely not be compatible. Thats what happened to the 16-bit applications when 64-bit came out. Loosing 32-bit compatibility would likely kill a big portion of the applications we still use today. However a good push toward 128-bit might speed things up a bit and get more 64-bit compatible applications. The obsolescence (End-Of-Life) of Windows XP may just be what we need, to put 32-bit in the grave once and for all. In my opinion it is a couple of years too early for 128-bit. There is still plenty of ground to cover with 64-bit.