Los Angeles (CA) - Microsoft executive Jim Allchin today previewed a new feature in Windows that can significantly increase the speed applications are loaded and extend the virtual memory of a computer system by accessing secondary and peripheral storage devices such as USB Flash memory sticks.
Improving the startup times of applications has been a focus area of the past two generations of the Windows operating system and it will not be different when Microsoft launches Vista at the end of next year. So far, load times were accelerated mainly by placing data of frequently used applications in favorable sections of a harddrive. This time around, the speed increase gets a bit more sophisticated.
Microsoft calls this feature "SuperFetch." According to group vice president Jim Allchin, library system codes of most used applications are pre-loaded during the normal start of the operating system (OS). For example, the vast majority of "Outlook" already is placed into the system memory during OS launch. When the user actually requests the application, only the container of the software needs to be loaded. Microsoft claims that this approach will cut down application boot times by about 80 percent.
