Windows 7 taking shape: the MinWin kernel

A senior Microsoft engineer recently demonstrated the core of the next version of Windows, codenamed Windows 7, at the University of Illinois. Microsoft admits that its work is outlined thanks to virtualization, multicore, and more.

The demonstration included a version of Windows 7 called "MinWin" that ran a miniature web server only with its core kernel. The server displayed simple HTML pages, including some dynamically-generated pages. The OS ran under Virtual PC and the resources it was consuming were: about 25MB on disk (compare with 14GB for a full Vista install) and 40MB of RAM. The OS took about 20 seconds to boot inside Virtual PC. Traut admitted that he would "still like to see it get smaller."

Here is a handy nine-minute excerpt with the MinWin demo.

For the future users can expect significant improvements in the core and virtual machine technology into all Microsoft products. Virtualization technology such as Virtual PC and Virtual Server are becoming more and more important as servers get more powerful and gain more and more CPU cores. The release of Virtual PC as a free download last year was just the beginning; Windows Server 2008 will ship with significant VM enhancements, and Windows 7 will only carry on from there. Windows Server Virtualization will run in what is called "Hypervisor" mode, where a host OS is not needed which will greatly improve performance. Parts of this technology will appear as "Viridian" as an add-on for Windows Server 2008.