OPERATING SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE WINDOWS XP, VISTA AND 7

STRUCTURE OF OS

 WINDOWS IS BUILT IN LAYERS

User mode layer closest to the person

Applications that you run (Word, Netscape) Support programs for applications - the Windows XP Subsystems

Kernel mode layer closest to hardware

Abstracts the CPU Threads, Asynchronous Procedure Calls (APCs) Interrupt Service Routines (ISRs) Deferred Procedure Calls (DPCs aka Software Interrupts) Providers low-level synchronization Programs that help software running on our system use the computers hardware Device drivers (software interfaces to hardware)

Windows Architecture
System Processes Service Control Mgr . LSASS WinLogon User Mode Session Manager SvcHost . Exe WinMgt . Exe SpoolSv . Exe Services . Exe Task Manager Explorer User Application POSIX Subsystem DLLs Windows DLLs OS / 2 Services Applications

Environment Subsystems

Windows

System Threads Kernel Mode

NTDLL . DLL

System Service Dispatcher ( kernel mode callable interfaces ) I / O Mgr Configura tion Mgr ( registry ) Security Reference Monitor Processes & Threads Local Procedure Call Plug and Play Mgr . Virtual Memory Object Mgr . File System Cache Power Mgr . Windows USER , GDI

Device & File Sys . Drivers

Graphics Drivers

Kernel Hardware Abstraction Layer ( HAL ) hardware interfaces ( buses , I / O devices , interrupts , interval timers , DMA , memory cache control , etc ., etc .) Copyright Microsoft Corporation

WINDOWS VISTA : KERNEL CHANGES

Kernel changes mostly minor improvements Algorithms, scalability, code maintainability CPU timing Interrupts not charged to threads Timing and quanta are more accurate Communication ALPC: Advanced Lightweight Procedure Calls Kernel-mode RPC New TCP/IP stack (integrated IPv4 and IPv6) I/O Remove a context switch from I/O Completion Ports I/O cancellation improvements Memory management Address space randomization (DLLs, stacks) Kernel address space dynamically configured Security: BitLocker, DRM, UAC, Integrity Levels

MinWin Change how Windows is built Lots of DLL refactoring API Sets (virtual DLLs) Working-set management Runaway processes quickly start reusing own pages Break up kernel working-set into multiple working-set System cache, paged pool, pageable system code Security Better UAC, new account types, less BitLocker blockers Energy efficiency Trigger-started background services Core Parking Timer-coalescing, tick skipping Major scalability improvements for large server apps Broke apart last two major kernel locks Kernel support for ConcRT User-Mode Scheduling (UMS)

WINDOWS 7 : KERNEL CHANGES

MEMORY MANAGEMENT

Windows Memory Management

Virtual memory manager (VMM)
Executive component responsible for managing memory

Lazy allocation
Avoid allocating memory until necessary

Prefetching
Move pages from disk to main memory before they are needed

Pagefile
Stores pages that do not fit in main memory Windows XP supports up to 16 pagefiles

Memory Organization
32-bit virtual address space
Windows 64-Bit Edition has 64-bit address space. 4GB virtual address space per process

User space vs. System space

Process can access only user space VMM stores page tables and other data in system space 2GB user space, 2GB system space

4KB pages

Memory Organization
Two-level hierarchical memory map
Page directory table
Page directory entries (PDEs) point to page table One page directory table per process Location in page directory register

Page table
Page table entries (PTEs) point to page frames

Page frame
Contains page of data

TLB

(translation lookaside buffer) accelerates address translation

WINDOWS XP:VIRTUAL MEMORY MANAGEMENT

Paged out files are located in pagefile.sys Size can change dynamically as needed Size is user configurable 4GB virtual address space

2 GB private process space 2 GB operating system use

APPLICATION MEMORY TUNING / 3GB SWITCH To accommodate applications that can effectively use private virtual memory larger than 2 GB , this feature was created. It moves the boundary between the private part of the 4 GB Virtual Address Space from 2GB to 1GB so that the private part of the address space is 3 GB This feature is activated by using the /3GB switch in the boot.ini file.

PHYSICAL ADDRESS EXTENSION(PAE)

Using the processor architecture defined registers and tables ,32 bit virtual address can be mapped into RAM pages above 4 GB boundary. This feature is supported in windows XP, Vista and 7 for 32 bit operating system. This feature is activated in boot.ini

ADDRESS WINDOWS EXTENSION

AWE is a set of functions that an application can use to request the operating system to map pages of RAM into its 4 GB Virtual Address Space. Using this feature , an application can thus use more RAM than the usual 2 GB available in the private part of the memory. This can be useful for applications that can benefit from more memory than is normally available.

WINDOWS VISTA:MEMEORY MANAGEMENT

Most important rule of cache design is that empty cache memory is wasted cache. Cache is expensive, high speed memory sucking power for no benefit . Hence it is vital that the cache is quickly populated to consistently deliver high hit ratio. Vista uses Super Fetch Preemptively populate the memory with what might be needed next.

SUPER FETCH
SUPERFETCH uses an intelligent prioritization scheme that understands which application you use most often and preloads these applications into memory. Drawback SUPERFETCH will fill the leftover memory on a low priority background disk thread. When running a high resolution ,high performance application it can really slow down

NON UNIFORM MEMORY ACCESS

NUMA is a computer memory design in multiprocessors where the memory access time depends on the memory location relative to a processor. Under NUMA, a processor can access its own local memory to another processor or memory shared between processors. NUMA provides separate memory for each processor, avoiding the performance hit when several processors attempt to address the same memory.

LARGE PAGE SUPPORT

Large page support enables server applications to establish large page memory regions, which is particularly useful in 64 bit Windows Vista. Each large page translation uses a single translation buffer inside the CPU. The size of the buffer is typically the orders of magnitude larger than the native page size, this increases the efficiency of the translation buffer, which can increase performance for frequently accessed memory.

RAM SUPPORT The maximum amount of physical RAM that is supported varies by 32 bit Windows version and edition:

Windows Windows Windows Windows

XP Professional: 4 GB Vista: 4 GB 7 Starter: 2 GB 7 all other editions: 4 GB

FILE MANAGEMENT

WINDOWS XP
On readable/writable disks, Microsoft Windows XP Professional supports the NTFS file system and three file allocation table (FAT) file systems: FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32. On CDROM and DVD media, Windows XP Professional supports two file systems: Compact Disc File System

WINDOWS VISTA
On readable/writable disks, Microsoft Windows VISTA supports the NTFS file system and two file allocation table (FAT) file systems: FAT16, and FAT32.

WINDOWS 7
On readable/writable disks, Microsoft Windows 7 supports the NTFS file system and TWO file allocation table (FAT) file systems: FAT16, and FAT32.

FAT AND NTFS

Security

FAT32 provides very little security. A user with access to a drive using FAT32 has access to the files on that drive. NTFS allows the use of NTFS Permissions. It's much more difficult to implement, but folder and file access can be controlled individually, down to an extreme degree if necessary. Windows XP Professional supports file encryption.

Compatibility
NTFS volumes are not recognized by Windows 95/98/Me. FAT and FAT32 volumes can be converted to NTFS volumes.

 Space Efficiency

NTFS supports disk quotas, allowing you to control the amount of disk usage on a per user basis. NTFS supports file compression. FAT32 does not. NTFS handles space management much more efficiently than FAT32. Cluster sizes play an important part in how much disk space is wasted storing files. NTFS provides smaller cluster sizes and less disk space waste than FAT32. In Windows XP, the maximum partition size that can be created using FAT32 is 32GB. This increases to 16TB (terabytes) using NTFS.

Reliability
FAT32 drives are much more susceptible to disk errors. NTFS volumes have the ability to recover from errors more readily than similar FAT32 volumes. Log files are created under NTFS which can be used for automatic file system repairs. NTFS supports dynamic cluster remapping for bad sectors and prevent them from being used in

I/O MANAGEMENT I/O MANAGEMENT

WINDOWS XP
Windows XP enhances the I/O subsystem by adding new APIs, including the following:
New cancel queue File System Filter Driver APIs Improved low-memory performance I/O throttling Direct Memory Access (DMA) improvements WebDAV Redirector System Restore Volume Snapshot Service

WINDOWS VISTA
Vista modifies the behaviour of asynchronous I/O operations. Asynchronous I/O APIs, a thread, different from the one that issued the I/O request, can be notified when the operation completes. With this, a single thread can issue all the I/O requests, and then switch to a different worker thread. If this thread is the one that handles the data after the I/O request completes, then a thread-switch, which causes a performance hit, may be avoided.

WINDOWS VISTA
Windows Vista also introduces synchronous I/O cancellation. During a synchronous I/O request, the application is blocked until the request is serviced or fails. In Windows Vista the application may issue a cancellation request. Applications that cancel the operation on user feedback may prefer to enable user feedback during the time the issuing thread is suspended for

WINDOWS VISTA
Windows Vista also implements I/O scheduling as prioritized I/O. Disk I/O requests in Windows Vista are assigned priorities; a higher priority request is given preferential treatment, over a request that has a lower priority, during the execution of the request. Windows Vista defines five priority classes Very Low, Low, Normal, High and Critical. By default I/O requests are assigned Normal priority.

Windows Vista also allows reservation of bandwidth on a per-application basis during disk access; this aims to guarantee the required throughput rate to the application when it accesses the disk.

Prior to Windows Vista, all I/O requests were capped at 64 KB; thus larger operations had to be completed in chunks. In Windows Vista, there is no limit on the size of I/O requests. This means an entire I/O operation can be completed by issuing fewer requests, which in turn may lead to higher performance.

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