Windows 7: Release Candidate 1 Preview
by Ryan Smith and Gary Key on May 5, 2009 11:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Getting Dirty: What’s Changing Under the Hood
While Windows 7 is a refinement of Vista, this doesn’t preclude making some changes in the kernel and other related systems. Microsoft has opted to spend most of their efforts working on various graphics systems, so among the big changes there’s only a few items of note that don’t fall into the graphics category.
Likely the change with the most immediate impact is that Microsoft has reworked the subsystem responsible for TV tuners, the Broadcast Driver Architecture (BDA). The latest incarnation of BDA adds a full DRM chain, giving rise to the Protected Broadcast Driver Architecture (PBDA). PBDA solves the biggest issue Microsoft has had getting Windows computers accepted as TV viewers: the lack of a simple and effective DRM chain between the tuner and the computer. HDCP ensures that content is protected between the computer and the display, but there has been no standardized way to do the same with incoming content. As such the only services that allow Windows connectivity with protected content thus far have been cable systems using CableCARDs, all the while limiting this functionality to computers specially licensed by CableLabs.
PBDA protected data flow. Slide courtesy Microsoft
PBDA also resolves some lesser technical issues with BDA, such as how a device should communicate with Windows Media Center when it needs setup information that Windows Media Center can’t provide, and how to feed guide data to Windows Media Center (currently it pulls the data from Zap2It). Although this is open to all services, Microsoft’s primary example here is DirecTV, which would require all of these additions. DirecTV has been developing the HDPC-20 tuner for PCs but held it back for unnamed reasons. All indications are that the HDPC-20 will finally be a go due to PBDA (and the addition of H.264 decoding support helps, too).
The downside from all of this however is obvious: more DRM. We’re not fans of DRM, so we’re not enthused to see that yet more DRM is required before content distributors are willing to let Windows computers access their content. It’s very much making a deal with the Devil.
Next up, the Windows kernel has also seen some tweaking in preparation for ever-larger core counts on CPUs. Vista was tuned for up to 32 cores, but the dispatcher lock made scaling beyond that difficult as it causes threads to spend too much time waiting on the lock. The lock has been redesigned to better support more cores, pushing the new cap up to 256 cores. Bear in mind that currently a single Intel Nehalem quad-core processor effectively has eight cores due to Hyper-Threading, so it was possible to hit the 32 core limit on a 4P Nehalem system, directly creating a problem once Intel puts more cores into Nehalem’s successor. With the limit raised to 256 cores, Windows 7 should be well ahead of the CPUs again.
SSD users will be happy to know that Windows 7 has improved support for those devices. Although Windows 7 doesn’t have an SSD-optimized file system as first rumored, it is adding TRIM support. For more details on TRIM, please see our SSD Anthology article
Wrapping up the changes, Microsoft has also added native support for Wireless Wide Area Networks (WWAN), more commonly referred to as mobile broadband networks. Adapters for such networks were already usable on existing Vista and XP installations, but this brings the configuration of those devices into the OS rather than using 3rd party utilities, similar to how Windows took over WiFi management previously.
Further optimizations have also been made under the hood to help contain Windows’ resource usage and speed up its boot time. Microsoft hasn’t documented every single change they’ve made to make Windows less resource hungry, but there’s clearly a cumulative effort beyond just squeezing more out of the DWM and gadgets (more on this later). Meanwhile everything that makes Windows less resource hungry feeds into shaving seconds off how long it takes to boot Windows, which along with other changes is designed to help get Windows to consistently boot in under 30 seconds. Changes here include additional parallelism in driver initialization and chopping down the number of services that load with the system before they’re ever called. SuperFetch has also been slightly tweaked to improve the post-boot experience – it no longer starts caching things immediately after the user account loads, so that using a freshly booted computer isn’t quite so sluggish. In effect SuperFetch has been deprioritized some so that its loading is less noticeable to the user.
Vista SP1 Boot Times, Courtesy Microsoft
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thebeastie - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
I guess what would be the most naive is to think that Windows 7 is about anything else but money, I mean they could easily improve Vista to have every feature that Windows 7 has, but they wont.MS has handed out whole new versions of DirectX and just about every other type of similar feature that is in Windows 7 so forth via service packs in the past.
Some how come that is not possible these days? Its just about treating us like complete fools.
B3an - Friday, May 8, 2009 - link
...You do know you're talking to yourself thebeastie??Are you really this stupid or is apple paying you to write this?
SkateNY - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
Microsoft is a company in decline. It's top managers, supporters, fanboys, and investors are all in denial about this.Their most recent OS was and remains an abysmal failure. Their attempt at competing in the MP3 market is a disaster, no matter how many people tell us that they love their Zune. Their "loss leader" in game consoles is just that...a leader in losses.
Want proof? Look at the stock price for the past five years...at least five years.
MSFT investors are desperate. They'll say and do anything to make others believe that the company is doing as well now as they were doing before they were adjudicated by the US Department of Justice as violating the Sherman Anti-trust Law in restraint of trade.
They've lost a great deal of their investments over the past ten years. They're so desperate that they need to tell themselves -- and anyone who will listen -- that this is a great company.
Sorry, but as is true in the rest of the real world, what has Microsoft done for anyone invested in them lately? The soft answer would be "nothing." The truth is that they've damaged their investors through bad judgment, poor management, and malfeasance.
What they've done is move a great deal of their previously loyal customers to Apple and Linux. And a large percentage of them who haven't made that move are looking into it.
It's a sad story. With so many resources, the best they could do was barely maintain their core products...Windows and Office. Not enough. The rest of the tech world is passing them by, and they don't seem to have a clue.
piroroadkill - Thursday, May 7, 2009 - link
Huh?Microsoft aren't going anywhere.
SimpleLance - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
"It's a sad story. With so many resources, the best they could do was barely maintain their core products...Windows and Office. Not enough. The rest of the tech world is passing them by, and they don't seem to have a clue."Who in the tech world is passing them by? Linux? There is nothing in the Linux world that is an innovation. Everything is a just a bad copying of what they see in Windows. Same goes for OSX. Name a technology from Linux or OSX, and you will find that in Windows years ago.
In the mean time, there is a lot of Windows features that neither OSX or Linux has.
BitLocker drive encryption - OSX only has folder encryption. Windows has had that since Windows NT 3.x.
Active Directory - now being copied by Linux
Access Control List - only recently added in OSX. Has been in Windows NT 1.0.
Remote Desktop - no equivalent at all in Linux or OSX. All they have is VNC. VNC started in the Windows world that got implemented in Linux and OSX. That is the worst form of remote desktop (screen scraping). Its like a high school student's home work. With Remote Desktop, Windows users threw away VNC as trash, and Linux/OSX picked it up - they really have nothing else, but junk.
SMB - copied as Samba. Where is AppleTalk now? Apple does not know how to write an OS. They had to take BSD.
DirectX - makes Open GL like a kid's work.
Etc. etc.
Who again is overtaking who?
New in Win7...
BITS Branch Cache (Vista had something called Peer Cache) - serverless P2P.
Support for TRIM command for SSD - now perhaps being added to Linux. Another me too effort. Definitely not in OSX.
Improved (less chatty) SMB - Samba is behind again. Nobody in the Linux world could make a better SMB. MS had to do it.
VHD Booting - Linux folks probably scratching their head now. What is that? they say. How do we copy that?
Plus all the other eye candy that people talk about.
Hgr - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
"In the mean time, there is a lot of Windows features that neither OSX or Linux has."I am sure of that, but of those you are listing here, many simply do not apply.
"BitLocker drive encryption - OSX only has folder encryption. Windows has had that since Windows NT 3.x."
BitLocker is a trademark of Microsoft, so it will be difficult to find it in non-Microsoft operating systems. If you're looking for drive encryption in Linux, distributions have been supporting this for years.
"Active Directory - now being copied by Linux"
Yes, the Samba folks are quite active in reimplementing AD in Samba 4 - as a means of Windows interoperability. Note that DNS, LDAP and Kerberos, the three most important of the protocols that AD is built upon, have been copied by Microsoft from Unix systems. They have been available for Linux de facto from their inception.
"Remote Desktop - no equivalent at all in Linux or OSX. All they have is VNC. VNC started in the Windows world that got implemented in Linux and OSX. That is the worst form of remote desktop (screen scraping). Its like a high school student's home work. With Remote Desktop, Windows users threw away VNC as trash, and Linux/OSX picked it up - they really have nothing else, but junk."
Just because you don't know better solutions does not mean that there are none. VNC certainly isn't a native Linux remote desktop protocol, much less a universal tool for everyday work (it has not been designed to be one). For years, X11 SSH tunnelling has been available. For those who want a low-latency remote desktop, the NX compression protocol and software suite have been available for quite some time, and many are perfectly happy with it. Linux's NX can compress even Windows RDP even further. ;-)
"DirectX - makes Open GL like a kid's work."
Just because DirectX is good for making games does not make OpenGL "a kid's work". After all, DirectX is more akin to SDL than to OpenGL. OpenGL has clearly a different target audience - it is used to build industrial software. Is it surprising that it's different?
"SMB - copied as Samba. Where is AppleTalk now? Apple does not know how to write an OS. They had to take BSD."
Actually, SMB was not invented "at Microsoft". It is an intellectual child of three companies - IBM, Microsoft, and 3com. Many operating systems have later adopted this protocol. Surprising, again? We want to be able to talk to other systems so we adopt it. In Linux, you can use at least half a dozen networked file systems.
"Improved (less chatty) SMB - Samba is behind again. Nobody in the Linux world could make a better SMB. MS had to do it."
Why hasn't it been less chatty before? :-) Well, of course, Samba is behind, Microsoft is in charge of updating their broken protocols, the Samba team is not going to do this for them. A Linux user simply uses a less chatty (less broken?) protocol.
"Support for TRIM command for SSD - now perhaps being added to Linux. Another me too effort. Definitely not in OSX. "
Linux kernel and its file system modules have been ready for this since half a year ago, according to one of the leading Linux file system developers. And it is no "me too effort", not as long as it is not Microsoft that invented it a started manufacturing the devices. Are you trying to imply that for any hardware feature, there is only one OS allowed to support it without being accused of me-too-ism, and that all other systems that include support later are just copycats? Great, I've mentioned Kerberos. Good to see that MS joined the "I want it too" crowd. :-)
andrihb - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
In your dreams, maybe.strikeback03 - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
Unfortunately, there are plenty of applications that don't run natively in any *nix (Adobe is my problem) so some version of Windows is the only option.coolkev99 - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
I don't buy an OS based on company stock price.C'DaleRider - Wednesday, May 6, 2009 - link
[quote]Look at the stock price for the past five years...at least five years.[/quote]OK...I did....and the stock price 5 years ago was in the $24/share range, as it was 4 years ago, 3 years ago, 2 years ago, last year. In fact, it's been around $24 per share going back almost 10 years ago.....although just after the beginning of 2000 it spiked to $48 per share, but then the dot com bubble burst and every tech stock fell, MS's included. The release of XP did give a bump to roughly $34/share, but again fell back to its "base" of around $24/share.
Sorry, but this is the first fact you are sadly misinformed on.
Then, the investors. Don't think most are crying and desperate at all. MSFT has been paying dividends every quarter, like clockwork. Granted, since Vista's release, it's not been spectacular, but has been fairly consistent.
Consider MSFT's 5 yr. net profit margin, 27.9%, is still well above sector and industry average. The company's low price-to-earnings ratio -- which Oakmark Fund places at less than nine, based on estimates for this year's earnings -- is closer to seven if you exclude the $4 a share in net cash.
Nicely, the stock is also currently sporting a dividend yield of 3%. But one problem is that investors, especially individual investors, put too much focus on growth expectations and too little focus on price.
Here's another tidbit you overlooked in your bashing.....MS had an EPS of $1.87 in '08, its highest EPS pay since '99. And MS's net profit has grown from '04-'08, every year. (FYI...net profits were, from '04-'08: $8.1B, $12.2B, $12.6B, $14B, and $17.6B).
Granted '09 will be "dismal," it's been dismal for everyone. But MS will still show a net profit and is paying nice dividends on its stock.
And as for everyone crying and gnashing teeth about MS, I wonder why Barron's, and every other analyist, puts Microsoft as a strong buy and NOT ONE has MS as a sell of any sort.
And game consoles? MS never planned to turn a profit on each...it IS a loss leader, just like the PS3. The games themselves are the profit center. Always has been like that and probably will always be like that.
So, where's the panic? Where's the problem? MS is still sitting on over $640M in cash reserves.....something a lot of companies can only wish to have.