Windows 7: Microsoft talks about the challenge of performance
As promised, Steven Sinofski, who is currently leading the development of Windows 7 at Microsoft, issued a ticket on the blog’s official operating system. It covers the performance, an area in which a large number of blog readers responded, offering an infinite number of things, and advising developers on what to implement and it was absolutely necessary to remove.
Sinofski would like to point out first that the performances are made up of a combination of factors. There are according to him to create a balance between what the system can consume to accelerate its own functioning and potential needs of the user. This border also posing the biggest problems with Vista, which operate on this point completely different from Windows XP.
The elements monitored
He explained further that the development of Windows 7 includes the monitoring of various elements such as:
* The consumption of RAM
* The use of CPU
* The performance of disk access, reading and writing
* The time starter, extinguishing system, but also paused and hibernation
* The general consumption resource base system
* The necessary space on the hard disk for the entire system
Some of these criteria are worked continuously, others are overexpressed before output versions “milestones”, such as beta and CTP, defining a precise level of quality.
There are “micro-benchmarks to monitor the defects of pages, using the processor or performance 3D (frames per second), all on an important set of different materials, for 32 or 64-bit quantity ram, revolutions per minute of hard disk, etc.. It also explains an interesting element: it would be easy to rely solely on resource consumption in all its forms. Less disk space, less consumption by the CPU cycles, less memory used.
Resources free or accelerated system?
Only now, the general consumption could decline to the point where resources would be almost totally free. But after? Let these resources will be very quiet for some useful software, as a Photoshop which manipulerait large images, but these uses are in fact minority if one considers the sum of what can be done with a computer. If a portion of resources can be used to accelerate most tasks, why not do it? And on and falls on the question of balance.
As a result, developers have to be content as a priority? The graphic designer who needs to use maximum RAM, amateur video games or rather the average user who manipulates a browser, an email client and a word processor? The answer is: everyone. Also, while the benchmarks are still running, we must also consider a new Windows can not occur with fewer drivers or without new features. So, we must add.
Sinofski finally spoke of balance between the real world and idealized settings. To set this balance, the return voluntarily made by users of Vista (who accepted it) to the first use of the system serves developers to know what types of uses priority on all machines.
For now therefore, the manager explains further challenge for the design of Windows 7 that the solutions and components to be made. Bet they will be a future ticket.
pcinpact.com