Windows 7 Graphics Architecture Overview - Part 1

Posted: May 05, 2009 at 8:33 AM

By: Yochay Kiriaty

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8 minutes, 35 seconds

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Windows 7 includes many new updates and improvements to the Graphics stack, including a new set of APIs for 2D graphics and writing text. Among the improvements are a major reduction in memory consumption by the DWM and new more efficient ways to combine the different available APIs. Join David Blythe, a senior architect in the Desktop and Graphics team, and Yochay Kiriaty, Technical Evangelist for a quick tour of Windows 7 Graphics architecture, its different components, and how they affect and improve the user experience in Windows 7. Discover what’s new in Windows 7 Graphics and how developer can tap into the new APIs.

This is the first of three overview videos and the first in a long series of videos about Windows 7 Graphics.

You can find additional information about Windows 7 Graphics in the:

Developer for Windows MSDN page
E7 blog post Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance
PDC session recordings:

To put a counter-oppinion - I feel quite comfortable with the format and the location. It is a nice cosy format and a pleasure to watch. I would love to see more of this. The speed of the speaker may put some requirements on the listener, depending on background, but people are different and one has to expect that. That it does not take place in some office can be a plus. I would argue that better sound and visual quality is very much appreciated when doing interviews. Not that we want to loose the authenticity and spontaneity, if you will, of random walks around various buildings but this is a nice complement that is well suited for communicating the actual material (which would seem appropriate for those who feel the talking is fast). So kudos from here at least.

About the actual splitting up of the videos into chunks. I must admit that long deep videos are something I like but downloading all three and watching them one after the other is not something I consider a challenge or significant annoyance. And if the splitting is done with a rationale behind it, then even better. But it's always a balance, if the videos become too small, they feel "skinny" and with too little meat.

Last but not least: Love the content here as well.

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CKurt while( ( !succeed=try() ) ) { }

May 05, 2009 at 8:56 AM quote reply

Hi !

Love the content of the video's but hate the way they have been recorded. We see channel 9 video's up to 50 minutes. Why post in 3 parts? And why don't you shoot in the office of the persons, this seems like pure marketing. Also the person sometimes speaks really fast...

Again, love the content and the idea, the execution is not really channel9 style though
Charles Welcome Change

May 05, 2009 at 9:28 AM quote reply

Like many interviews/shows, this was shot in our studio. Channel 9 provides more than one interview format. Yochay is not in marketing. He's a developer! Besides the format, what else do you find un-Channel 9 about this? They're talking about the engineering that's gone into the graphics system in WIndows 7....

C
exoteric

May 05, 2009 at 9:57 AM quote reply

To put a counter-oppinion - I feel quite comfortable with the format and the location. It is a nice cosy format and a pleasure to watch. I would love to see more of this. The speed of the speaker may put some requirements on the listener, depending on background, but people are different and one has to expect that. That it does not take place in some office can be a plus. I would argue that better sound and visual quality is very much appreciated when doing interviews. Not that we want to loose the authenticity and spontaneity, if you will, of random walks around various buildings but this is a nice complement that is well suited for communicating the actual material (which would seem appropriate for those who feel the talking is fast). So kudos from here at least.

About the actual splitting up of the videos into chunks. I must admit that long deep videos are something I like but downloading all three and watching them one after the other is not something I consider a challenge or significant annoyance. And if the splitting is done with a rationale behind it, then even better. But it's always a balance, if the videos become too small, they feel "skinny" and with too little meat.

Last but not least: Love the content here as well.
Charles Welcome Change

May 05, 2009 at 10:07 AM quote reply

You will continue to see a tendency for high quality conversational/educational pieces on Channel 9. This does not mean that the old school C9 format will die...

Thanks for the feedback, all!
C
CKurt while( ( !succeed=try() ) ) { }

May 05, 2009 at 10:27 AM quote reply

Don't get me wrong. I like really like the content it might just be because I tought of it being something like 'Going Deep' content wise but wasn't filmed that way.
spivonious

May 05, 2009 at 10:49 AM quote reply

I like the content and the format, but have to wonder why it was split up into 3 pieces.

As far as the guest speaking fast, I didn't notice it but I did notice that he was very nervous.
intelman

May 05, 2009 at 1:23 PM quote reply

The split is confusing, one video is probably better. The editing is kind of weird as well. A nice layer system was drawn in the whiteboard, then Yochay Kiriaty said some awkward "We heard about....." then theboard was magically blank and the subject continued in a completely different direction. I can live with this though, just thought I'd point out that it was awkward.

Great content though, certainly interesting.
Charles Welcome Change

May 05, 2009 at 3:29 PM quote reply

This is awesome! Thank you, Yochay.
C
rhm

May 05, 2009 at 3:53 PM quote reply

I hope the DWM system has a more flexible API in win7. In Vista you could only make a thumbnail of a complete top-level window using it, which is nice because that's what it was designed for, but with a bit more effort it could have been a 100 times more useful. I came up with a situation where I desperately wanted to make an app that would display a portion of the window of several apps in one place, at 100% scale. If the DWM API had supported that it would have been an amazing lifesaver. It sounds from this video that there is more flexibility in Win7.
figuerres ???

May 06, 2009 at 5:58 AM quote reply

I have only had a few minutes to check out the rc but saw something interesting:

i have a sony vaio laptop that has been running vista
with 7 the perfomance number for "gaming graphics" when up but the number for "desktop" was the same.

not sure what that really means, the final number is the same, but some how "gaming" got better??

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