With Microsoft pushing their latest operating system, Windows 7, out the door on the 22nd of October, they've been keen to let everyone know about improvements like DirectX 7, more efficient use of system resources while remaining fast. However, one feature that they havn't spoken about much yet is the OS' much more efficient way of utilising the power of multi-core CPUs.

Microsoft has now said though that Windows 7 increases the count of compatible cores from 64 in Vista, to a whopping 256 in 7.

Jon DeVaan, senior vice president of Microsoft's Windows Core Operating System Division says this change was particularly weighty. He states, "One dimension is support for a much larger number of processors and getting good linear scaling on that change from 64 to 256 processors. There's all kinds of depth in that change."

Evans Data analyst Janel Garvin says that is perhaps the most important change. He states, "An operating system is never going to be able to take an application that isn't already parallel and make it so. Developers still need to multi-thread their apps. Microsoft has done surprisingly little until recently to help developers write parallel applications, except for their alliance with Intel to promote Parallel Studio."

He continues, "However, in the last year they've made some announcements and promises for Visual Studio 2010 about enhanced tools for parallel programming. It's likely that the success of Parallel Studio has impressed upon them the importance of providing Windows developers with the tools they need to remain competitive going into the future when manycore will be the standard."

Read full news article: Microsoft Pushes Multicore with Windows 7 [external link]