After the Windows 8 Developer Preview release a few weeks ago we have been seeing a lot of activity from Microsoft courtesy the Building Windows 8 blog which updates us with the latest improvements made on the upcoming version of Windows.
A couple of days ago Steven Sinofsky posted on yet another improvement on the building windows 8 blog ,this time around about the newly improved task manager in Windows 8.As we all know Windows 8 is going to be on the smallest machine in the world to the one of the largest ones i.e from the Desktops,Laptops and the Tablets to the large servers which run on the data centers around the world.The newly improved task manager of Windows 8 is now capable of handling a large number of logical processors,this is a big achievement from the scalability front.
As we compare head to head Windows 7 task manager with Windows 8 Task manager this is what we found out.
As we compare head to head Windows 7 task manager with Windows 8 Task manager this is what we found out.
The above figure shows the Windows 7 Task Manager running 160+ logical processors,as we can see we can hardly make out anything from the CPU Usage History.
Here are some of the Limitations faced by Windows 7 Task Manager:
■ Lack of real-time comparisons: When you are looking at a CPU graph for lots and lots of logical processors, it is the anomalies that are interesting. At scale, it is pretty hard to compare moving line graphs of a 60-second window of CPU utilization to understand what is going on.
■ Tiny graphs: When you get to the 64+ logical processor range, the graphs get pretty small. If you are trying to figure out which processors are being heavily used, you really have to squint to figure it out. When you get over 256 logical processors, you can barely read the charts at all.
■ Finding the processor ID: If you do identify an anomalous graph, there is no easy way to get the corresponding processor ID.
Now lets have a look at what Microsoft has pulled off with the improved Task Manager of Windows 8.
As we can see above there are some vast improvements in the Windows 8 Task Manager running 160+ logical processors.The new task manager can support upto 640 logical processors and with the vast improvements in the graphics front it makes it more readable than the Windows 7 Task Manager which was barely readable and with the features like Tooltip used for showing Logical ID’s and scroll bars for scaling 160+ logical processors it looks quite a handy tool for the servers.
