Channel 9: Inside Windows 7 Redux
Windows 7 hit general availability today, putting it in stores and on new PC’s. There are plenty of beneath-the-surface changes that make Windows 7 more power efficient, scalable, secure and responsive (and of course, there are lots of user-visible features like user-interface enhancements like Aero Snap and Aero Peek; to easier file sharing and streaming with Home Group and PlayTo; to business-focused features like DirectAccess and Branch Cache). I recorded a Channel 9 interview last year with Charles Torre where I talked about a number of these enhancements, including core parking, support for systems with more than 64 processors, the removal of the dispatcher lock and more. There’s obviously a lot of interest in Windows 7 because the video has become the most-viewed in Channel 9’s history with 658,000 views at the time of this post!
I always enjoy chatting with Charles and showing my support for Channel 9, so a couple of weeks ago we talked again, this time about some of the changes I didn’t have a chance to cover in my previous Windows 7 interview. In this latest video, I describe Distributed Fair Share Scheduling (DFSS) and memory management enhancements. I also show demos of process reflection and how Windows divides the processors into groups on a running 256-processor system, something that’s required for compatibility with applications that use thread management APIs designed for systems with less than 64 processors. Finally, I talk a little about how I started with computers. Enjoy!
Dave Solomon and I, along with Alex Ionescu, are hard at work on the 6th Edition of Windows Internals that will cover all the significant Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 kernel changes in detail, but in the meantime stay tuned to my blog where I’m going to start a multi-post Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 kernel changes series.
Comments
Anonymous
January 01, 2003
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 23, 2009
The new video is 700MB, isn't that a bit overkill for what's basically audio + a static camera frame of a person talking? Anyways, very informative video. Hearing about all the improvements made me consider trying out W7 and comparing it with Vista...Anonymous
October 24, 2009
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 27, 2009
The comment has been removedAnonymous
November 01, 2009
Fascinating. Will there be any Microsoft articles or interviews on the changes to the file cache and prefetching? For being one of the most advertised innovations in Vista it's been strangely quiet about the significant changes to Windows 7 in the same field.Anonymous
November 02, 2009
hello,Mr Mark,i am one of your reader,you know,your book ie windows internals is my favourite one,so ,my question is,when will you finish the 6th edtion ?i can not wait any more,and will it include win7,right?thank you very much form a chinese stddentAnonymous
November 04, 2009
Any idea when shellrunas will be updated to work on the win7 gui elements (task bar & start menu)? It works great in explorer, but not on the task bar or in the non-expanded start menu.Anonymous
November 11, 2009
Thanks for the information...i worked with windows 7 for a month now and i´m a little bit disappointed because the hype was sooo big and it is not so different as vista...but it works more faster..thats a big point to use it!Anonymous
November 13, 2009
Mark, here's a blog entry that documents what sounds like a major bug in Heap32Next in 64-bit Win7 : http://thenewjamesbaker.blogspot.com/2009/11/performance-of-heap32next-on-64-bit.html Basically the performance of Heap32Next has become a linear function of the number of objects on the heap. If you have 4 million heap objects, a single call to Heap32Next will take several seconds. Don't know what the best channel would be to report that to Microsoft, but I hope to have some success here.