PDC 2009 Day 1: Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Kernel Changes

It’s not the first time that I hear Mark Russinovich’s session on the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 kernel changes.

Eran Stiller wrote a good post summarizing the main kernel changes (based on the materials from the Windows 7 Bootcamp at the PDC pre-conference day), so I’m not going to repeat the same here.

Additionally, you can watch Mark talk about Windows 7 internal changes on Channel 9.

Among the biggest kernel changes are optimizations that have to do with scaling Windows to hundreds of processors, such as eliminating the dispatcher (scheduler) lock, the PFN database lock and other exciting changes to mechanisms described in great detail in the Windows Internals book.

If you’re interested in a complementary point of view on user-mode changes and new features relevant to Windows 7 developers, go ahead and read Introducing Windows 7 for Developers :-)