Diving into the Vista Heap

Posted By: Charles | Jun 21st, 2006 @ 3:19 PM | 55,366 Views | 20 Comments

We recently interviewed Adrian Marinescu, lead developer on the Windows Kernel team focusing on the Heap Manager and associated technologies. The Heap Manager plays a big role in shaping system performance and security. (Heap mechanisms have been targets of several security attacks in the past by savvy, highly-skilled hackers.)
Vista promises to provide a heap management infrastructure that will be very hard for expert hackers to exploit and Adrian, the main developer of this system, explains how the heap has been improved in Vista and why it will help make Vista both more performant and secure.

We've had Adrian on before when he worked on the Windows Object Manager.

Don't know what the Windows Heap is? Well, watch and learn.
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#Jun 21st, 2006 @ 4:12 PM
troposphere
troposphere
When did "performant" become a word? 

"The new heap infrastructure is more insurant that there won't be any hacking going on"




#Jun 21st, 2006 @ 5:34 PM
Charles
Charles
Welcome Change
It's a word. I hear it all the time. The software industry has plenty of words that Outlook spell checker does not recognize...
C
#Jun 21st, 2006 @ 6:03 PM
AdityaG
AdityaG
OMG VISTA FTW LOLZ!!1one
troposphere wrote:
When did "performant" become a word? 

"The new heap infrastructure is more insurant that there won't be any hacking going on"



It's called the english language. It does evolve. No, the dictionaries are not representative of the language. It's the other way around. Soon performat WILL show up in the dictionaries.

Besides, how did "google" become a verb? Same deal. It's to get a point across in an active voice. Plus it's l33t. The last reason should be all that someone needs Tongue Out

Cheers.
#Jun 22nd, 2006 @ 12:48 AM
Klaus Enevoldsen
Klaus Enevoldsen
Development has never been easier nor more complicated...

Hello,

I live in Denmark and we have a list of proper Danish words, each year the list is evaluated and new words are added, some are even removed. So untill a word is on the list it is not a proper Danish word - even if it is used quite often.

The organisation that does this work is called "Dansk sprognævn" - "Danish Language Councel". I guess it is important for a small language like Danish.

Many of the latest additions to the list of proper Danish words are actually English words that we use as our own. I am pretty sure "performant" is not on the list.

Thanks Klaus Enevoldsen

#Jun 22nd, 2006 @ 1:35 AM
rhm
rhm
AdityaG wrote:

troposphere wrote:When did "performant" become a word? 

"The new heap infrastructure is more insurant that there won't be any hacking going on"



It's called the english language. It does evolve. No, the dictionaries are not representative of the language. It's the other way around. Soon performat WILL show up in the dictionaries.

Besides, how did "google" become a verb? Same deal. It's to get a point across in an active voice. Plus it's l33t. The last reason should be all that someone needs

Cheers.


It's true what you say about the language evolving, but you have to bear in mind that every new word (and some old ones) has a Coefficient of People Wanting To Punch You In the Face Every Time They Hear You Say It, lets call it Cpunch.

I'd suggest, from someone who is satisfied with the word "fast", that performant has a pretty high Cpunch.
#Jun 22nd, 2006 @ 2:46 AM
mawcc
mawcc
Make it so
We use "performant" in german, too. And it's not in the "Duden". But maybe the discussion should better focus on Vista's Heap Manager.
#Jun 22nd, 2006 @ 7:44 AM
mrshrinkray
mrshrinkray
English has been vandalised by a whole sespit of American Marketing/Sales terms, particularly in software. The richness comes from the fact it's 40% French, parts Latin, parts Germanic and so on. However when you see words like performant, and words suffixed with "ize" you can only imagine that the people who made up those words aren't exactly Wordsworth. Energize me!

Anyway that's off topic. Have Microsoft hired a few 'hackers' to have a good old punch at the heap?
#Jun 22nd, 2006 @ 7:54 AM
AdityaG
AdityaG
OMG VISTA FTW LOLZ!!1one
rhm wrote:


It's true what you say about the language evolving, but you have to bear in mind that every new word (and some old ones) has a Coefficient of People Wanting To Punch You In the Face Every Time They Hear You Say It, lets call it Cpunch.

I'd suggest, from someone who is satisfied with the word "fast", that performant has a pretty high Cpunch.


I am thinking Cpunch has a higher Coefficient of People wanting to punch you.

Back on topic, I tried to make sense of some of the stuff at the end but it kind of went over my head. But I see they are doing the same thing as the rest of Vista where they add more layers and bringing stuff up closer to user mode. Pretty cool.

Cheers.
#Jun 22nd, 2006 @ 11:09 AM
Charles
Charles
Welcome Change

Agreed. Please stay on topic. There is some very interesting information in this video. I'm surprised nobody is talking about this stuff...

C

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