Inside Windows 8

A great deal of data is collected during the alpha and beta phases (aka the Developer Preview and the Customer Preview) of Windows. As with Windows 7, Windows 8 performance telemetry is invaluable for identifying performance bottlenecks and bugs in Windows running in the real world. There…

Jon Berry, a veteran Windows engineer, digs into the new way Windows 8 manages processes to support the brave new world of Windows running on various CPU architectures including ARM and ATOM, which present an interesting set of technical challenges given the need to aggressively…

Chris Stevens is a software developer on the Windows kernel team working on the Windows boot environment. Windows 8 boots faster than any other version of Windows. Why? How? Chris begins with the fundamentals (so, if you don't know anything about the boot process or what actually happens when an OS…

Continuing with our series of conversations with engineers in Windows, we meet Pedro Teixeira, a software developer on the Windows kernel team (aka core OS) who has improved the Windows thread pools in Windows 8. Thread pools are thread management subsystems (user mode and kernel mode)…

The Windows heap manager has been around as long as Windows has, evolving with each release, getting faster, more reliable, and more secure. In Windows 8, the heap manager improves in two major areas: performance and security. In this video, Greg Colombo, a developer on the Windows kernel team…

In developing Windows 8, power efficiency was a primary engineering theme. This means that all aspects of the system were designed and developed with efficient power usage in mind. It's paid off—Windows 8 is the most power efficient version of Windows to date. In this video,…

Arun Kishan digs into the low level details of Windows 8's new application model. How has Process Lifetime Management (PLM) been reimagined in Windows 8? How does app suspension work, exactly, or, what happens when an app is no longer in the foreground and not closed? How much work…

Windows 8 introduces an application programming model for building new kinds of user mode apps called Windows Store Apps. The name reflects the new way users discover, download, purchase, rate, and install applications on Windows 8: The Windows Store.On Windows 8, underneath this new…