Microsoft BUILD: Windows 8, A Pre-Beta Preview
by Brian Klug & Ryan Smith on September 13, 2011 12:05 PM EST- Posted in
- BUILD
- Windows
- Microsoft
- Windows 8
- Trade Shows
The Technical Side Of Windows 8
As we mentioned in the opening of this article, the single biggest addition to Windows 8 coming from Windows 7 will be Metro. Microsoft’s last major overhaul of Windows’ underpinnings was Windows Vista, and like Windows 7 before it, Microsoft is not looking to significantly alter the operation of the Windows kernel or related systems for Windows 8. With that said this doesn’t mean that there aren’t any technical changes that will ship with Windows 8.
Fundamentally Microsoft wants to keep the system requirements for Windows 8 the same as Windows 7, which means it needs to run (with varying definitions of “smoothly”) on a 1GHz CPU paired with 1GB of RAM and a DX9 class GPU. Realistically as their published requirements stand there is one difference from Windows 7: Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM). Windows 7 would work with older XPDM drivers (albeit without any of the benefits of WDDM), however Windows 8 specifically mentions WDDM as a requirement. This makes sense given the greater reliance on the GPU for Metro, but it also means there are going to be some machines out there using very early DX9 GPUs (e.g. Intel GMA 900) that won’t be able to run Windows 8 due to a lack of video drivers.
In any case the addition of ARM into the mix will be sure to spice things up., While Microsoft is optimizing Windows 8 to run on ARM CPUs there’s a vast range of ARM CPUs, and this is the full version of Windows. Microsoft’s current system requirements are easily discernable as x86 based, and we’d expect the ARM requirements to be fairly high to keep pace. Give the launch of quad core ARM SoCs later this year, it’s likely that will be a popular pairing with Windows 8 when it launches.
On a final note about system requirements, while Microsoft isn’t talking about specific versions of Windows 8 at this time, they’ve made it clear that x86 will live on for at least one more generation in order to fulfill their desire to have Windows 8 run on everything Windows 7 ran on. So x86 versions of Windows should be expected.
Moving on, as this was a press session as opposed to a technical session, Microsoft was a bit light on the details. We’re expecting quite a bit more in the next couple of days, but for the moment we’ve only been briefed on a few user-facing technologies that are new to Windows 8.
On the hardcore side of things, Microsoft has added a few tricks to Windows in order to keep memory usage from growing and to make the OS better suited for tablets. On the memory side they have added Page Combining, which will combine duplicate memory pages into a single page. This is primarily to reduce the overhead from multiple applications all having copies of the same shared resource by having applications outright share that resource’s memory pages. Page Combining will primarily be a tool for reclaiming memory when memory usage is approaching critical levels.
For making the OS better suited for tablet hardware, Microsoft has focused on small changes that can help the hardware sleep longer and wake up less often. Coalescing system timers and a dynamic tick mechanism are two such features that will be coming to Windows 8 (unfortunately we don’t have any more details on their function at this time). Meanwhile Metro will play a big part in making Windows tablet friendly, as Metro applications will be designed from the start to be able to handle phone/tablet style process management. This is to say that discarded applications will continue to stay open as a background application, having all of their memory pages intact but unable to schedule CPU time so long as they’re a background application. They’ll remain in this state until the OS decides to evict them, at which point they need to be able to gracefully shut down and resume when the user re-launches the application. Internally Microsoft calls this freezing and rehydrating an application.
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rs2 - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 - link
"On a final note about system requirements, while Microsoft isn’t talking about specific versions of Windows 8 at this time, they’ve made it clear that x86 will live on for at least one more generation in order to fulfill their desire to have Windows 8 run on everything Windows 7 ran on."Hang on a second. Did you seriously just imply that Windows (or any other major OS) is going to drop support for x86? Or that there was *ever* any doubt that Windows 8 would not support x86? I think you've gone at least a little bit crazy.
x86 is here to stay, for at least the forseeable future (which I think gets us to around Windows 12). No software company is going to be willing to cede the entire x86 market to their competitors or ditch x86 as a platform just because phones and tablets tend to run ARM processors. Doing either of those things makes absolutely no sense at all.
Rand - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 - link
I think he means X86-32, MS hasn't made any statements implying that X86 uarch as a whole is going anywhere.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 - link
Correct. x86 as opposed to x64 (since that's the nomenclature MS uses). Windows 8 will have 32bit x86 editions; MS won't transition to solely 64bit x64 for another generation.rs2 - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 - link
Then the nomenclature used by MS is incorrect. x86-64 (or apparently, x64 is MS-speak) is fully x86 compatible, even down to support for 16-bit "real mode". As such x86 will always live on, even if Windows does eventually require an x86-64 based processor.loll123 - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 - link
Yes, but the issue is whether Windows will support processors that only have the x86-32 part of the instruction set.Lugaidster - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 - link
Do you need to submit an app to the store in order to install a metro application or are metro applications still downloadable like regular apps?Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 - link
I can't completely answer this but I will do as much as I can.ARM: The Store is the only way to get applications
x86: Applications can still be installed normally
With that said I can't completely answer where Metro fits in, because that specific question was never asked or a suitable answer given. Certainly Metro applications using MS's DRM scheme will need to go through the Store to make the licensing click. But Metro apps without DRM...?
Lugaidster - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 - link
I was thinking of something like business apps or apps that would never be approved because of content (the major reason jailbreaking exist on an iPad is because of the latter). It would be great if you could sideload metro apps...Stas - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 - link
When I used Win98, I was stoked when I first heard about Windows XP. Absolutely loved it, after I started using it.Windows Vista also made me anxious about the wait. Unfortunately, I wasn't as pleased; however, still satisfied.
Windows 7 is by far the best OS I ever used. That is exactly how I thought it would turn out when I decided to download the RC version.
Today though, I'm looking at this simplified experience for ADD kids, and I'm rather disappointed. Huge buttons, lack of menus and options, and I bet they killed off kb shortcuts :/ I would expect this from Apple; but MS... son, I'm disappoint *face palm*
I will still try it, whenever RC is available but I'm not holding my breath for something useful, efficient, and flexible. I'm sure it will be a great tablet OS though. Now, just to figure out why in the world I would need a tablet with powerful desktop, and a high-end smart phone...
loll123 - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 - link
I have ADD and I started my computing career on MS-DOS when I was 3 years old. So don't go around and make comments like that please.