Memory Management with Windows 8

Windows 8 – The Memory Savior People thought Windows 7 was efficient for memory consumption but guess what? Microsoft has unveiled in the latest news that Windows 8 will surpass all its predecessors in terms of memory usage. It would be so optimized that it can run on computers that were not able to operate Windows Vista. What exercise did Microsoft demonstrate? Microsoft tested Windows 8 Developer Preview to prove that it uses less RAM compared to Windows 7. Windows 7 and Windows 8 were both made to run on a low power netbook having 1 GB of RAM. Windows 8 only consumed 281 MB of RAM compared to Windows 7 that used 404 MB of RAM. The CPU usage was reported at 1% and 5% respectively. The objective behind this effort is to ensure Windows 8 is capable of running on low-end systems having 1 or 2 GB of RAM. Power saver The more RAM a system uses the more power it consumes. Both these terms are directly proportional to each other. If you are using a mobile device, your battery life is determined based on power consumption. RAM usage indirectly contributes to battery life. Windows 8 is designed to provide optimal performance using only 200 MB of RAM. [caption id="attachment_8473" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Figure 2 Windows 8 Advanced Task Manager[/caption] Memory de-duplication Often, the same value is stored at different memory locations. Windows 8 has a new memory manager that searches for values that are duplicated in different memory sections and removes the duplicates through a process known as de-duplication. Depending on the number of applications running simultaneously, this technique can save 10-100MB. Startup processes Often, when your computer starts, you notice a large number of processes starting in the background that tend to consume large amounts of memory. Windows 8 has removed 13 processes from starting when the computer starts and configured other services to start manually or when requested by the user. Optimization Microsoft conducted a research on how low level components utilized memory in 1990s. they redesigned their code to reduce memory usage by classifying the processes that need to run and those that can be run. Desktop changes In all predecessor operating systems, the Windows desktop was loaded into the memory utilizing more space. In Windows 8, the desktop is not a part of the Windows shell and hence does not start along with the operating system saving 23 MB of RAM according to Microsoft. Assigning priority to Memory Windows 8 has the capability to determine what memory needs to be used and what memory should be freed. Processes are prioritized in a more efficient manner and process memory management is undertaken by a better scheme. Idle applications will be switched from  main memory to some other location after a certain timeout has been reached to ensure that active processes do not experience a scarcity of resources. Windows 8 surpasses all its predecessors in terms of memory usage and efficiency. It targets a broad range of hardware devices with low and high RAM configurations and Microsoft plans to acquire a larger market share due to its more efficient memory management.]]>