Archives for posts with tag: Operating Systems

Windows Embedded: Past, Present and Future

November 12, 09 //
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Windows Embedded Standard is a general purpose OS, based on the Windows codebase, that is highly modular and fine tuned to run on a number of devices ranging in size and complexity (but less powerful and kess general purpose in nature than your average PC) that are x86/x64 powered (casino gaming consoles, retail kiosks, hand-held devices, etc). The next version of Windows Embedded Standard will arrive some time in 2010 – thus the name Windows Embedded Standard 2011. 

Windows Embedded is the general term for all Windows embedded products including Windows Embedded Standard, Windows Embedded Compact (aka CE), Windows Embedded Server, Windows Embedded Enterprise.

For the Windows Embedded Standard product line, product examples are Windows XP Embedded (aka XPe), Windows Embedded Standard 2009, Windows Embedded Standard 2011, Windows Embedded POSReady 2009.

We figured it would be a good idea to meet some of the developers who write Windows Embedded Standard to get a better understanding of, well, exactly what it is and where it is going. Here, we meet and chat with Windows Embedded Standard developers Oren Winter, Jon Parati, Mike Moini and Milong Sabandith. What are the key new features in Windows Embedded Standard 2011? What is Windows Embedded Standard 2011, exactly? What’s Windows Embedded CE, again? How is Windows Embedded related to Windows proper? Windows Embedded Standard 2011 is built from the same sources that make up Windows 7? What’s different between the two and why? How is Windows Embedded Standard able to be so modular? What’s the developer story for Windows Embedded Standard 2011? And more. Tune in. Classic Channel 9.

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C9 Conversations: Yousef Khalidi on Cloud Computing

November 11, 09 //
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Yousef Khalidi is a Distinguished Engineer with a rich history in both operating system design and distributed computing. Yousef is responsible for the overall design of Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud operating system (which includes the Azure development platform in addition to the “OS”, aka Windows Azure). Windows Azure is an operating system in the sense that it supplies a host of core services, process scheduling and management, identity management, etc, that we typically expect from a general purpose operating system.

In this first installment of C9 Conversations (we sit down with various Microsoft technical leaders to discuss a wide range of topics related to general purpose computing; all in high quality video and audio (big thanks to Tina Summerford for producing this new series)), the topic is cloud computing. What is it, exactly? Why does it matter? What are the challenges involved in taking software to the cloud? What does that mean, exactly? Is Windows Azure an operating system by analogy? What is Windows Azure, exactly? And more..

Yousef will be presenting his ideas on cloud computing and its future at PDC09 as part of the Technical Leaders track. Make sure to attend his talk if you’re interested in how Microsoft thinks about the future of cloud computing.

Silviu Calinoiu: Inside Windows 7 – Fault Tolerant Heap

August 25, 09 //
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The Fault Tolerant Heap (FTH) is a subsystem of Windows 7 responsible for monitoring application crashes and autonomously applying mitigations to prevent future crashes on a per application basis. For the vast majority of users, FTH will function with no need for intervention or change on their part.

Principal Development Lead and rock star developer Silviu Calinoiu is the mastermind behind FTH. Here, we go deep into how FTH works and why it’s designed the way it is.

The Fault Tolerant Heap is another example of the low level efficiency built into the system: FTH automatically corrects memory faults that cause applications to crash which has the pleasant side effect of preventing future crashes. How does FTH work, exactly? What types of memory problems does it address, specifically? How do developers monitor FTH events and can they override FTH’s behavior? What does this all mean to the average user?

FTH, as an autonomous monitoring and correction system, represents a step in the right direction for the evolution of a more homeostatic general purpose operating system. Simply, Windows is getting smarter in the sense that it’s increasingly becoming better at self-regulation and self-healing. Yes, there’s a very long way to go, but we’re making real progress.

You will continue to learn about recoverability in Windows over the coming months here on C9.  

Tune in.

Arun Kishan: Inside Windows 7 – Farewell to the Windows Kernel Dispatcher Lock [Arun Kishan: Inside Windows 7 - Farewell to the Windows Kernel Dispatcher Lock]

August 6, 09 //
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You’ve learned about many of the new features of the latest version of the Windows kernel in the Mark Russinovich Inside Windows 7 conversation here on Channel 9. One of Mark’s favorite kernel innovations is the way the Windows 7 kernel manages scheduling of threads and the underlying synchronization primitives that embody kernel thread management.

Prior to Windows 7 (and therefore Windows Server 2008 R2) the Windows kernel dispatcher employed a single lock, the dispatcher lock, which worked well for a relatively small numbers of processors (like 64). However, now that we find ourselves in the midst of the ManyCore era, well, 64 processors aren’t that many… A new strategy was required to scale Windows to large numbers of processors since a single lock is limited in capability, by design: The masterful David Cutler, one of the world’s greatest software engineers, wrote the NT scheduler in a time when the notion of affordable 256-processor machines was more science fiction than probable. 

As we learned in the Mark Russinovich video, Windows 7 can now scale to 256 processors thanks to the great engineering of Arun Kishan, a kernel architect you’ve met on C9 back in the Vista days. In order to promote further scalability of the NT kernel, Arun completely eliminated the dispatcher lock and replaced it with a much finer grained set of synchronization primitives. Gone are the days of contention for a single spinlock. How did Arun pull this off, exactly, you ask? Who is this genius? Well, tune in. Lots of answers await…

Arun’s work directly benefits the overall performance of Windows running on many processors and means, simply, Windows can now really scale. Thank you, Arun!

 

Spinlocks are synchronization primitives that cause a processor to busy-wait until the state of the lock’s memory location changes.

 
As the name implies, the dispatcher lock is the fundamental lock associated with the kernel dispatcher, or the scheduler.

 

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