As Microsoft is slowly nearing to public launch of Windows 8, efforts have been started to tweak the new OS for optimum performance and usability. On Friday, company has revealed the Memory footprint of upcoming Windows 8. It showcases that the imminent Windows OS consumes only half of the memory compare to current Windows 7 memory requirements.
The whole idea behind the exercise is to omit any obligatory upgrade requirements to run Windows 8. This will help Microsoft to convince users for cakewalk migration and adoption from Windows 7 to Windows 8 platform.
“Something that might not be obvious is that minimizing memory usage on low-power platforms can prolong battery life. Huh? In any PC, RAM is constantly consuming power. If an OS uses a lot of memory, it can force device manufacturers to include more physical RAM. The more RAM you have on board, the more power it uses, the less battery life you get. Having additional RAM on a tablet device can, in some instances, shave days off the amount of time the tablet can sit on your coffee table looking off but staying fresh and up to date.” wrote Microsoft’s Bill Karagounis in a blog post on Friday.
To stay certain with this thought, Microsoft tested the memory usage on 2 different machine – running on almost identical hardware configuration – but with different version of Windows OS.
How Microsoft is going to achieve their objective? There are couple of methodology which will help company to do so:
Memory combining:
When users access the content, chances remains high they access similar content in multiple windows and this creates multiple instances in RAM for same content. So many times many applications pre-reserve the memory for additional functionality procrastinating that users may use it in future. However, there is absolute no guarantee whether users will invoke such features in near future.
Through, Memory combining technique, Windows 8 will allocate the RAM only for real time usage and reserve the system memory for all future possible features of applications.
Windows Services Optimization:
While OS is running, many windows services run on background and get revoke automatically with the system start. With “Start on Demand” functionality, company has put many of the services, like Windows update and plug & play, on manual mode. This will tweak the OS for lesser memory consumption for background services.
Less Memory Usage for General OS operations
While executing the application, OS consumes memory for its own services and support. Known as “pages”, company has analyzed this service till the core and found 2 aspects of usage type. One which get refer most are “hot” and other “cold”. To optimize the memory footprints, company has clubbed the “cold” ones with other components to reduce the memory load and use it for other services.
Invoking Desktop Components When Required
Microsoft has changed the behavior of Desktop components with Windows8. “We’ve taken advantage of the fact that there will be some set of devices on which users will stay in the immersive,” says Karagounis. Windows 8 will only initialize operating system components unique to the full desktop experience when users switch outside of Metro. This saves around 23MB in RAM.
Prioritization of Memory
Company has given an ‘self-intelligent touch’ to Windows8. This will help the system to take self-decision over what to keep in the memory and what need to be removed sooner. This way upcoming OS will make use of the memory in optimal way.
Company has already been released pre-beta version of Windows 8 and is expected to be available for users in 2012. The first look of Windows 8 has created much hyped among users and this time company has decided to support ARM and SoC.
Though the road-map of Windows 8 is still under the shell, it would be much interesting to see how users welcome the new Windows 8, especially when more than 70% users are still hanging with most successful Windows XP.
