Essay on "Mainstream Operating System Integrated With All Components"

Essay 5 pages (1306 words) Sources: 5

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Mainstream Operating Systems

Analysis of the Windows 7 Operating System

The intent of this analysis is to evaluate how the Windows 7 operating system has been designed to ensure all components are integrated at the thread and memory process level, ensuring secure operation and optimized memory management. As a result, this analysis will look at the center of the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system, its kernel, and the integrative aspects of the kernel structure and performance. The MinWin kernel also serves as the basis for how Windows 7 manages the Guest Virtual Machine (GVM) and Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM), two critical areas of the overall operating system responsible for synchronizing I/O and file management and managing scheduling of tasks (Wildstrom, 2009).

Analysis of the Windows 7 Operating System

For Microsoft to abandon its traditional approaches of defining memory management through a multi-threaded and often pre-emptive memory management design, the recognition of how critical it was from a design standpoint to stay in parity with UNIX and Linux is seen in the Windows 7 design (Spring, 2008). The concept of a kernel is predicated on recompilation of key system attributes during each run-time, in effect re-configuring and customizing the system with each boot-up sequence (Phillips, 1996). Microsoft made the decision to create the MinWin kernel architecture as it is configurable prior to run-time in an attempt to compete with the functionality of Apple's OS X, the many variations of UNIX and the greatest threat to Microsoft, open-source Linux operating systems as well (Wildstrom, 2009). Another factor Microsoft took into account in moving to a more kernel-based architecture in their latest operating system was the need to emulate virtualization across multiple process streams while retaining compatibility for the previous generation Win16 and Win32 API development architectures (Bradley, 2009). Microsoft also embraced the kernel concept due to the need to stabilize the rapidly changing nature of its IRQ interrupt structure which had for well over a decade served as the means for the operating system to arbitrate for resources in order to complete I/O tasks (Forgione, Smith 1993).

From a process, thread, memory management, task scheduling and I/O process management standpoint, the Windows 7 MinWin kernel is specifically designed to ensure compatibility to the Windows XP Host Virtual Machine (HVM), which introduced the concept of pre-emptive multitasking including arbitration and control of memory threads at 16-, 32- and 64-bit lengths vs. The cooperative multi-tasking of the clearly enterprise-class operating systems Windows produced (Forgione, Smith 1993). All of these design requirements were seen by Microsoft as critical for moving beyond the limitations of their legacy operating system designs that had been predicated on outdated concepts of computer users being only interested in personal productivity or light collaboration, not enterprise-class support (Bradley, 2009).

As a result the interprocess coordination and organization of the MinWin kernel was specifically designed to support, the inclusion of the Guest Virtual Machine (GVM), Guest Kernel Mode and Kernel Mode platform were essential to preserve compatibility while also creating the foundation for supporting a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) (Wildstrom, 2009). These components are what form the foundation of the synchronization agent and order state engine that tracks processes, threads, memory management usage, scheduling and also manages calls for I/O as well. In addition, the Guest Virtual Machine (GVM) part of the Windows 7 manages a virtualization agent to coordinate the functions of multithreaded applications, each requiring a specific segment of time and resources from the kernel in order to be completed.

For Microsoft, the challenge was creating a kernel in Windows 7 capable of keeping up with the advanced designs from Linux and UNIX operating systems. What Microsoft did was design the kernel to support a structural element that allowed for more efficient virtualization across shared and dedicated memory, in effect creating partitions capable of managing the overall flex of memory requirements (Arar, 2008). Microsoft further capitalized on this by concentrating on how best… READ MORE

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