Multi-core running Windows 7 drives virtual desktop growth

At the kernel level, an important improvement in Windows 7 relative to Windows Vista is the improved support for multi-core processors and multithreaded applications, which theoretically leads to higher performance, greater flexibility, and lower energy consumption.

So is Windows 7 really more performance than Vista on a core processor? We tested on a Dell Precision T3500 workstation with Nehalem Xeon W3540 2.93GHz four core processors, 4GB memory, NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 graphics, and three identical hard drives, Install Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista Ultimate SP2, Windows 7 Ultimate, respectively, 32-bit versions.

(The bigger the result the better)

In the spec Viewperf 10 test, Windows 7 scored more 45-49% than XP and seemed absolutely worth the upgrade, but noticed a slight decline compared to Vista, but there was little difference. Cinebench R10 results are slightly different, three sets of systems are actually the same, in absolute terms, Windows 7 is the best.

In addition, after the opening of Hyper-Threading technology, three sets of systems Cinebench R10 performance has significantly improved, but the spec Viewperf 10 only Vista achieved slightly better performance, Windows 7 and XP have a small regression.

The multithreaded performance of Windows 7 does not seem to be as strong as Vista, but it is not as simple as that. A thread if you want to read a project that might be used by another thread, you must use a program lock to ensure that only one thread can modify it at any time. In the previous operating system, the thread needed to access the program lock to assign a program lock to send the request, but the processing mechanism is global, so once the number of processors in the system increased, there will be bottlenecks. This is exactly the root cause of the Windows system, including the server version, that ran up to 64 processor cores before.

Windows 7 introduces a new mechanism that bypasses the global program lock concept, thus increasing the number of processor cores to 256, and not being accompanied by performance losses, except that the old mechanism does not overload when the system processor core is less, so windows 7 It is difficult to significantly improve multithreaded performance on desktops and small server workstations.

A VMware executive said that the release of Microsoft Windows 7 would drive the adoption of desktop virtualization technology, but would not necessarily trigger a massive migration from physical desktops to virtual desktops.

A number of industry analysts say many IT users are interested in desktops but have been waiting for the release of Windows 7. Migrating from a physical desktop to a virtual desktop can be a very large project, and many companies think that the migration of virtualization may be inefficient, and then they will face another project that upgrades the operating system.

Bogomil Balkansky, vice president of VMware Product marketing, also believes that Windows 7 will make desktop virtualization the focus of IT professionals, and he learned from his contacts with users that users are more focused on Windows 7 than Vista.

Balkansky says that if you decide to upgrade your employee desktop to Windows 7, the CIO will be more comprehensive about desktop strategy. "Windows 7 is a very hot topic right now," he said. I think Windows 7 makes virtual desktops One of the things that many businesses have to consider. ”

But Balkansky does not believe that users will soon be using virtual desktops on a large scale. "As you expect, it's not likely that people will migrate to Windows 7 or virtual desktops overnight," he said. ”

But Virtual desktop technology can simplify migration from XP or Vista to Windows 7. For example, desktop virtualization can minimize the risk of migration by retaining the user's XP environment. If Windows 7 fails, the user only needs to switch back to XP working state.

"Obviously, Windows 7 poses a challenge for users, and it takes a lot of care to migrate hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of desktops to another operating system, and there are many logical challenges and problems," he said. ”

In addition to the Windows 7 desktop operating system, Microsoft will release the latest Windows Server 2008 R2 server operating system. This virtualization technology for the server's operating system will allow Microsoft to compete directly with VMware because of its real-time migration capability to migrate virtual machines from one physical server to another.

The adoption of a large-scale adoption of Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization software will be a serious blow to VMware's core business. Balkansky Frankly, users have no compelling reason to switch to Microsoft server virtualization technology. VMware offers a lower TCO for each application and more versions of Windows Server operating systems than Microsoft itself supports.

Balkansky said that for VMware users who upgraded to Windows Server 2008 R2, they did not have to make any significant changes to their virtualization strategy to take advantage of the latest operating system.

"You don't need to make any changes in design," he said. One of the core benefits of VMware Virtualization is a complete abstraction between the hardware and the operating system, so that you treat these factors separately. ”

Let's look at another topic: energy consumption.

Windows 7 can handle multiple threads to the same execution pipeline, so the processor can power down the transistor on the idle pipeline and save energy. We execute four threads in spec Viewperf when Hyper-threading is turned on, which means half the pipeline is idle or free.