For Windows 7, we have a dedicated team focused on startup performance, but in reality the effort extends across the entire Windows division and beyond. Our many hardware and software partners are working closely with us and can rightly be considered an extension to the team.
Startup can be one of three experiences; boot, resume from sleep, or resume from hibernate. Although resume from sleep is the default, and often 2 to 5 seconds based on common hardware and standard software loads, this post is primarily about boot as that experience has been commented on frequently. For Windows 7, a top goal is to significantly increase the number of systems that experience very good boot times. In the lab, a very good system is one that boots in under 15 seconds.
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Engineering Windows 7
Written by Odd-Magne Kristoffersen on August 29th, 2008 with comments disabled.
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Steven Sinofsky: Many folks have commented and written email about the topic of performance of Windows. The dialog has been wide ranging—folks consistently want performance to improve (of course). As with many topics we will discuss, performance, as absolute and measurable as it might seem, also has a lot of subtlety. There are many elements and many tradeoffs involved in achieving performance that meets everyone’s expectations. We know that even meeting expectations, folks will want even more out of their Windows PCs (and that’s expected). We’ve re-dedicated ourselves to work in this area in Windows 7 (and IE 8). This is a major initiative across each of our feature teams as well as the primary mission of one of our feature teams (Fundamentals). For this post, I just wanted to frame the discussion as we dig into the topic of performance in subsequent posts. Folks might find this post on
IE8 performance relevant along with the
beta 2 release of IE 8.
Performance is made up of many different elements. We could be talking about response time to a specific request. It might mean how much RAM is “typical” or what CPU customers need. We could be talking about the clock time to launch a program. It could mean boot or standby/resume. It could mean watching CPU activity or disk I/O activity (or lack disk activity). It could mean battery life. It might even mean something as mundane as typical disk footprint after installation. All of these are measures of performance. All of these are systematically tracked during the course of development. We track performance by running a known set of scenarios (there are thousands of these) and developers can run specific scenarios based on exercising more depth or breadth. The following represent some (this is just a partial list) of the metrics we are tracking and while developing Windows 7:
- Memory usage - How much memory a given scenario allocates during a run. As you know, there is a classic tradeoff in time v. space in computer science and we’re not exempt. We see this tradeoff quite a bit in caches where you can use more memory (or disk space) in order to improve performance or to avoid re-computing something.
- CPU utilization - Clearly, modern microprocessors offer enormous processing power and with the advent of multiple cores we see the opportunity for more parallelism than ever before. Of course these resources are not free so we measure the CPU utilization across benchmark runs as well. In general, the goal should be to keep the CPU utilization low as that improves multi-user scenarios as well as reduces power consumption.
- Disk I/O - While hard drives have improved substantially in performance we still must do everything we can do minimize the amount that Windows itself does in terms of reading and writing to disk (including paging of course). This is an area receiving special attention for Windows 7 with the advent of solid state storage devices that have dramatically different “characteristics”.
- Boot, Shutdown, Standby/Resume - All of these are the source of a great deal of focus for Windows 7. We recognize these can never be fast enough. For these topics the collaboration with the PC manufacturers and hardware makers plays a vital role in making sure that the times we see in a lab (or the performance you might see in a “clean install”) are reflected when you buy a new PC.
- Base system - We do a great deal to measure and tune the base system. By this we mean the resource utilization of the base system before additional software is loaded. This system forms the “platform” that defines what all developers can count on and defines the system requirements for a reasonable experience. A common request here is to kick something out of the base system and then use it “on demand”. This tradeoff is one we work on quite a bit, but we want to be careful to avoid the situation where the vast majority of customers face the “on demand” loading of something which might reduce perceived performance of common scenarios.
- Disk footprint - While not directly related to runtime performance, many folks see the footprint of the OS as indicative of the perceived performance. We have some specific goals around this metric and will dive into the details soon as well. We’ll also take some time to explain \Windows\WinSxS as it is often the subject of much discussion on technet and msdn! Here rather than runtime tradeoffs we see convenience tradeoffs for things like on disk device drivers, assistance content, optional Windows components, as well as diagnostics and logging information.
We have criteria that we apply at the end of our milestones and before we go to beta and we won’t ship without broadly meeting these criteria. Sometimes these criteria are micro-benchmarks (page faults, processor utilization, working set, gamer frame rates) and other times they are more scenario based and measure time to complete a task (clock time, mouse clicks). We do these measurements on a variety of hardware platforms (32-bit or 64-bit; 1, 2, 4GB of RAM; 5400 to 7200 RPM or solid-state disks; a variety of processors, etc.) Because of the inherent tradeoffs in some architectural approaches, we often introduce conditional code that depends on the type of hardware on which Windows is running.
On the one hand, performance should be straight forward—use less, do less, have less. As long as you have less of everything performance should improve. At the extreme that is certainly the case. But as we have seen from the comments, one person’s must-have is another person’s must-not-have. We see this a lot with what some on have called “eye candy”—we get many requests to make the base user interface “more fun” with animations and graphics (“like those found on competing products”) while at the same time some say “get rid of graphics and go back to Windows 2000”. Windows is enormously flexible and provides many ways to tune the experience. We heard lots on this forum about providing specific versions of Windows customized for different audiences, while we also heard quite a bit about the need to reduce the number of versions of Windows. However, there are limits to what we can provide and at the same time provide a reliable “platform” that customers and developers can count on and is robust and manageable for a broad set of customers. But of course within a known context (within your home or within a business running a known set of software) it will always be possible to take advantage of the customization and management tools Windows has to offer to tune the experience. The ability to have choice and control what goes on in your PC is of paramount importance to us and you will see us continue to focus on these attributes with Windows 7.
By far the biggest challenge in delivering a great PC experience relative to performance is that customers keep using their PCs to do more and more things and rightfully expect to do these things on the PC they own by just adding more and more software. While it is definitely the case that Windows itself adds functionality, we work hard to pick features that we believe benefit the broadest set of customers. At the same time, a big part of Windows 7 will be to continue to support choice and control over what takes place in Windows with respect to the software that is provided, what the default handlers are for file types and protocols, and providing a platform that makes it easy for end-users to personalize their computing experience.
Finally, it is worth considering real world versus idealized settings. In order to develop Windows we run our benchmarks in a lab setting that allows us to track specifically the code we add and the impact that has. We also work closely with the PC Manufacturers and assist them in benchmarking their systems as they leave the factory. And for true real-world performance, the
Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program provides us (anonymous, private, opt-in) data on how machines are really doing. We will refer to this data quite a bit over the next months as it forms a basis for us to talk about how things are really working, rather than using anecdotes or less reliable forms of information.
News Source:
Engineering Windows 7
Written by Odd-Magne Kristoffersen on August 28th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Windows 7.
Last week was an exciting week for Windows and blogging. Senior Vice Presidents Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan launched a brand new blog called Engineering Windows 7 (or E7 for short). In case you don't know who these guys are, Jon DeVaan manages the Read More......(
read more)
Written by Windows Vista Team Blog on August 22nd, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Community and E7 and Engineering and Engineering Windows 7 and Featured News and Windows 7 and Windows Vista and blogging and windows.
Last week was an exciting week for Windows and blogging. Senior Vice Presidents
Steven Sinofsky and
Jon DeVaan launched a brand new blog called
Engineering Windows 7 (or E7 for short). In case you don't know who these guys are, Jon DeVaan manages the engineering team responsible for creating the central (or "core") components and architecture of Windows and Steven Sinofsky manages the group responsible for the user experiences in both Windows and Windows Live. The Engineering Windows 7 blog is designed to create an open discussion about
how we're making the next version of Windows - currently codenamed Windows 7 - and
to create a background of understanding for the engineering decisions made in order to ship Windows 7.
Engineering the next version of the most used operating system to-date is a very complex software project. Why? Because Windows has a very large user base and that user base is very diverse. Planning the next version of Windows (and ultimately developing it) is a huge under-taking as it requires Microsoft to learn and understand the needs for all types of customers that use Windows today. On the Engineering Windows 7 Blog, you can expect a two way discussion on how those customer needs are balanced out to deliver Windows 7 into the hands of customers.
The one thing you won't find on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog is major product announcements. The focus is to simply discuss the engineering of Windows 7. Not only can we expect posts from both Steven and Jon on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog, we can also expect to hear from other members of the engineering team who are essentially building the next version of Windows as we speak. Sweet!
I look forward to reading about the engineering done to make Windows what it is.
So what does that mean for us here on the Windows Vista Team Blog and for the Windows Experience Blog? Windows Vista is still very much relevant today. There is still very much to say in regards to Windows Vista and lots more experiences to blog about surrounding Windows Vista and Windows Live. Our blogs here won't be going away. We continue to add value to Windows Vista with releases such as Windows Search 4.0 and coming soon the Beta 2 release of Internet Explorer 8. You can also expect us to take part in the ongoing discussion taking place from the Engineering Windows 7 blog on building the next version of Windows as well.
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on August 22nd, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Community and E7 and Engineering and Engineering Windows 7 and Featured News and Windows 7 and Windows Vista and blogging and windows.
Last week was an exciting week for Windows and blogging. Senior Vice Presidents
Steven Sinofsky and
Jon DeVaan launched a brand new blog called
Engineering Windows 7 (or E7 for short). In case you don't know who these guys are, Jon DeVaan manages the engineering team responsible for creating the central (or "core") components and architecture of Windows and Steven Sinofsky manages the group responsible for the user experiences in both Windows and Windows Live. The Engineering Windows 7 blog is designed to create an open discussion about
how we're making the next version of Windows - currently codenamed Windows 7 - and
to create a background of understanding for the engineering decisions made in order to ship Windows 7.
Engineering the next version of the most used operating system to-date is a very complex software project. Why? Because Windows has a very large user base and that user base is very diverse. Planning the next version of Windows (and ultimately developing it) is a huge under-taking as it requires Microsoft to learn and understand the needs for all types of customers that use Windows today. On the Engineering Windows 7 Blog, you can expect a two way discussion on how those customer needs are balanced out to deliver Windows 7 into the hands of customers.
The one thing you won't find on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog is major product announcements. The focus is to simply discuss the engineering of Windows 7. Not only can we expect posts from both Steven and Jon on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog, we can also expect to hear from other members of the engineering team who are essentially building the next version of Windows as we speak. Sweet!
I look forward to reading about the engineering done to make Windows what it is.
So what does that mean for us here on the Windows Vista Team Blog and for the Windows Experience Blog? Windows Vista is still very much relevant today. There is still very much to say in regards to Windows Vista and lots more experiences to blog about surrounding Windows Vista and Windows Live. Our blogs here won't be going away. We continue to add value to Windows Vista with releases such as Windows Search 4.0 and coming soon the Beta 2 release of Internet Explorer 8. You can also expect us to take part in the ongoing discussion taking place from the Engineering Windows 7 blog on building the next version of Windows as well.
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on August 22nd, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Community and E7 and Engineering and Engineering Windows 7 and Featured News and Windows 7 and Windows Vista and blogging and windows.
Last week was an exciting week for Windows and blogging. Senior Vice Presidents
Steven Sinofsky and
Jon DeVaan launched a brand new blog called
Engineering Windows 7 (or E7 for short). In case you don't know who these guys are, Jon DeVaan manages the engineering team responsible for creating the central (or "core") components and architecture of Windows and Steven Sinofsky manages the group responsible for the user experiences in both Windows and Windows Live. The Engineering Windows 7 blog is designed to create an open discussion about
how we're making the next version of Windows - currently codenamed Windows 7 - and
to create a background of understanding for the engineering decisions made in order to ship Windows 7.
Engineering the next version of the most used operating system to-date is a very complex software project. Why? Because Windows has a very large user base and that user base is very diverse. Planning the next version of Windows (and ultimately developing it) is a huge under-taking as it requires Microsoft to learn and understand the needs for all types of customers that use Windows today. On the Engineering Windows 7 Blog, you can expect a two way discussion on how those customer needs are balanced out to deliver Windows 7 into the hands of customers.
The one thing you won't find on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog is major product announcements. The focus is to simply discuss the engineering of Windows 7. Not only can we expect posts from both Steven and Jon on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog, we can also expect to hear from other members of the engineering team who are essentially building the next version of Windows as we speak. Sweet!
I look forward to reading about the engineering done to make Windows what it is.
So what does that mean for us here on the Windows Vista Team Blog and for the Windows Experience Blog? Windows Vista is still very much relevant today. There is still very much to say in regards to Windows Vista and lots more experiences to blog about surrounding Windows Vista and Windows Live. Our blogs here won't be going away. We continue to add value to Windows Vista with releases such as Windows Search 4.0 and coming soon the Beta 2 release of Internet Explorer 8. You can also expect us to take part in the ongoing discussion taking place from the Engineering Windows 7 blog on building the next version of Windows as well.
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on August 22nd, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Community and E7 and Engineering and Engineering Windows 7 and Featured News and Windows 7 and Windows Vista and blogging and windows.
Last week was an exciting week for Windows and blogging. Senior Vice Presidents
Steven Sinofsky and
Jon DeVaan launched a brand new blog called
Engineering Windows 7 (or E7 for short). In case you don't know who these guys are, Jon DeVaan manages the engineering team responsible for creating the central (or "core") components and architecture of Windows and Steven Sinofsky manages the group responsible for the user experiences in both Windows and Windows Live. The Engineering Windows 7 blog is designed to create an open discussion about
how we're making the next version of Windows - currently codenamed Windows 7 - and
to create a background of understanding for the engineering decisions made in order to ship Windows 7.
Engineering the next version of the most used operating system to-date is a very complex software project. Why? Because Windows has a very large user base and that user base is very diverse. Planning the next version of Windows (and ultimately developing it) is a huge under-taking as it requires Microsoft to learn and understand the needs for all types of customers that use Windows today. On the Engineering Windows 7 Blog, you can expect a two way discussion on how those customer needs are balanced out to deliver Windows 7 into the hands of customers.
The one thing you won't find on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog is major product announcements. The focus is to simply discuss the engineering of Windows 7. Not only can we expect posts from both Steven and Jon on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog, we can also expect to hear from other members of the engineering team who are essentially building the next version of Windows as we speak. Sweet!
I look forward to reading about the engineering done to make Windows what it is.
So what does that mean for us here on the Windows Vista Team Blog and for the Windows Experience Blog? Windows Vista is still very much relevant today. There is still very much to say in regards to Windows Vista and lots more experiences to blog about surrounding Windows Vista and Windows Live. Our blogs here won't be going away. We continue to add value to Windows Vista with releases such as Windows Search 4.0 and coming soon the Beta 2 release of Internet Explorer 8. You can also expect us to take part in the ongoing discussion taking place from the Engineering Windows 7 blog on building the next version of Windows as well.
Written by Brandon LeBlanc on August 22nd, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Community and E7 and Engineering and Engineering Windows 7 and Featured News and Windows 7 and Windows Vista and blogging and windows.
Unhappy with some aspect of Vista? Ciprian suggest collecting all those issues and submitting them to the new “Engineering Windows 7″ blog, so they aren’t repeated in the successor to Vista.
ITsVISTA
Windows 7 and Windows Vista features that need to be fixed | Windows Vista for Beginners
Related posts
Written by Joe on August 17th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on News-Link and Windows 7 and problems.
Moving onward from windows xp service Pack 3 and windows vista Service Pack 1 to Windows 7, Microsoft is gearing up for the death of 32-bit versions of the Windows client. On the server-side, Window's transition to 64-bit only architectures is almost complete, with Windows Server 2008 being the last server operating system from Microsoft with support for 32-bit CPUs.
On the client-side, the evolution from x86 to x64 is still a long way from the finish line, but the Redmond company is starting to witness the first signs. According to the software giant, the adoption of x64 Vista is growing at a pace superior of x86, a trend which is predicted to accelerate.
"We've been tracking the change by looking at the percentage of 64-bit PCs connecting to windows update, and have seen a dramatic increase in recent months. The installed base of 64-bit Windows Vista PCs, as a percentage of all Windows Vista systems, has more than tripled in the U.S. in the last three months, while worldwide adoption has more than doubled during the same period. Another view shows that 20% of new Windows Vista PCs in the U.S. connecting to Windows Update in June were 64-bit PCs, up from just 3% in March," explained Christopher Flores, Director Windows Communications.
Microsoft is giving credit not to end users for the increasing shift to 64-bit Vista operating systems, but to its channel partners, especially original equipment manufacturers, who are making the jump to x64 CPUs and machines preloaded with the analog variant of the latest Windows version. The main advantage of 64-bit Vista over its 32-bit equivalent is the ability to handle RAM in excess of 4 GB, and on top of the extra system memory, to also manage a larger number of CPU intensive applications simultaneously. In the end, the user experience will simply benefit from the added performance that 64-bit Vista SKUs will deliver.
"What started out as a gradual (some would say "glacial") movement toward 64-bit PCs, driven primarily by technology enthusiasts, seems to have turned into a swift transition, likely fueled by the falling cost of memory and consumers' desire to get the most out of their PCs," Flores indicated. Still, the transition is far from over. In fact, Microsoft has already confirmed that Windows 7, the successor of Windows Vista, would also be made available in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. In this context, it seems, Microsoft will only deliver 64-bit exclusive versions with Windows 7 Server and maybe Windows 8, on the client-side.
For the time being, Microsoft is claiming that x64 Windows Vista is growing, and said nothing about the 64-bit version of Windows XP SP2. XP SP3 is of course only available for 32-bit machines.
Written by Madhukar on August 1st, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Windows 7 and Xp Vs Vista and windows.
Moving onward from windows xp service Pack 3 and windows vista Service Pack 1 to Windows 7, Microsoft is gearing up for the death of 32-bit versions of the Windows client. On the server-side, Window's transition to 64-bit only architectures is almost complete, with Windows Server 2008 being the last server operating system from Microsoft with support for 32-bit CPUs.
On the client-side, the evolution from x86 to x64 is still a long way from the finish line, but the Redmond company is starting to witness the first signs. According to the software giant, the adoption of x64 Vista is growing at a pace superior of x86, a trend which is predicted to accelerate.
"We've been tracking the change by looking at the percentage of 64-bit PCs connecting to windows update, and have seen a dramatic increase in recent months. The installed base of 64-bit Windows Vista PCs, as a percentage of all Windows Vista systems, has more than tripled in the U.S. in the last three months, while worldwide adoption has more than doubled during the same period. Another view shows that 20% of new Windows Vista PCs in the U.S. connecting to Windows Update in June were 64-bit PCs, up from just 3% in March," explained Christopher Flores, Director Windows Communications.
Microsoft is giving credit not to end users for the increasing shift to 64-bit Vista operating systems, but to its channel partners, especially original equipment manufacturers, who are making the jump to x64 CPUs and machines preloaded with the analog variant of the latest Windows version. The main advantage of 64-bit Vista over its 32-bit equivalent is the ability to handle RAM in excess of 4 GB, and on top of the extra system memory, to also manage a larger number of CPU intensive applications simultaneously. In the end, the user experience will simply benefit from the added performance that 64-bit Vista SKUs will deliver.
"What started out as a gradual (some would say "glacial") movement toward 64-bit PCs, driven primarily by technology enthusiasts, seems to have turned into a swift transition, likely fueled by the falling cost of memory and consumers' desire to get the most out of their PCs," Flores indicated. Still, the transition is far from over. In fact, Microsoft has already confirmed that Windows 7, the successor of Windows Vista, would also be made available in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. In this context, it seems, Microsoft will only deliver 64-bit exclusive versions with Windows 7 Server and maybe Windows 8, on the client-side.
For the time being, Microsoft is claiming that x64 Windows Vista is growing, and said nothing about the 64-bit version of Windows XP SP2. XP SP3 is of course only available for 32-bit machines.
Written by Madhukar on August 1st, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Windows 7 and Xp Vs Vista and windows.
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