SuperFetch, a new feature of Windows Vista, is designed to intelligently manage memory pages to keep the system responsive even after running background tasks that take a lot of memory. Watch this Channel9 video to see how Vista attempts to form subsets of memory to page together. The speaker also touches on other new kernel-level features such as ReadyBoost and flash-based hibernate.
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2005-07-06
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...which is not even comparable to what Vista is accomplishing here. The Linux approach is brute force at best.
And you don't think that arbitrarily tracking applications and activity which look popular and shoving them into memory is a brute force measure? What happens when a routine is broken?
It's also just an evolution of previous functionality in Windows XP, where your most popular applications and resources were pre-loaded into memory for you. It's another one of the soundbites regarding new features in a version of Windows that you mysteriously never hear of again once it's released - and then it goes straight on to sites like annoyances.org ;-).
I think many users are going to see an awful lot of inexplicable slow downs with many applications that use a lot of memory, particularly complex games, image editing etc., where SuperFetch feels that it is the time to kick something in. I'm also rather sceptical that people think that pre-loading memory is a good, ground breaking idea. Pre-loading means flushing away cache, so it's not exactly a free operation.
Probably the most important thing related to the whole innovative SuperFetch thing, and memory management in Vista in general, is the fact that they've copied from Linux in terms of what they do with free memory. Linux has the general philosophy that free memory is wasted memory, and tries to cache as much as it can at any one time. Vista attempts to follow this philosophy, and is probably the major difference between earlier versions of Windows.
Member since:2006-01-25
Well, I'm no Mac fan, but I am a Linux fan 
Linux has had this for a while:
preload is an adaptive readahead daemon. It monitors applications that users run, and by analyzing this data, predicts what applications users might run, and fetches those binaries and their dependencies into memory for faster startup times.
If I'm understanding SuperFetch right, its the same thing as preload. I believe SuSE ships preload by default if I remember right... not sure, but I know some major distro does and has been for at least a year or so. Ubuntu has it in universe...
Edited 2006-10-09 13:52
Member since:
2006-06-03
This sounds good as long as you are doing predicable things.
If the thing is slightly inaccurate tho or you are being unpredictable, the system might be 'superfetch'ing pages that you don't want, reducing your apps disk bandwidth.
'Bad' developers can cheat the system by randomly touching pages to keep their code/data in memory permenantly, degrading app performace. I know that developers already do this ('quicklaunch' helper apps.) but this will be much more insidious.
Stephen.
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2005-11-16
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"And to add - Throwing hardware at an OS is not the solution. Ever since Windows 1.0, there have been other operating systems that have done more, with less hardware, over and over again. From GEOS to BeOS to OS X."
OSX may have a lot of things going for it, but doing more with less hardware isn't one of them.
Member since:2005-07-06
This is all great, but will run the disk for two-three minutes caching data, even when you're running on battery. I need my disks clear and ready for action, the second the desktop appears; not three minutes later :|
SuperFetch is good precisely because it avoids these type of scenarios. In fact, it has very little overhead (1%) of your computer's resources over it's lifetime. In addition, if your system features the new hybrid flash drives it will be able to take advantage of that to reduce physical I/O even more.
Member since:2006-06-03
"it has very little overhead (1%) of your computer's resources over it's lifetime" I know you're quoting the interview but... what does 'over its lifetime' mean? Does it mean that for 1 hour in every 100, the CPU / RAM usage is 100%?? On what hardware?
I assume they are saying that to smooth out the computer resource usage spikes that will occur. What is the maximum % of computer resources used? And when will they happen? Does this 1% include periods of time when the computer is powered down/hiberhating??
that 1% means very little without a clear explaination of what it means.
Member since:
2006-09-19
Another misfeature to cover the massive bloat, bad design, and bad coding.
Dllcache, prefetch, superfetch etc etc. They wouldn't need any of that crap if only they coded a quality OS.
Now people will loose even more disc space to that bloatware.
(sarcasm)
I wonder if Vista will run on my trusty laptop, P3 with 192Mb of RAM and 40Gb hard disk. That baby is happy with Slackware Linux on it and does everything I ask of it.
Will Vista? (end of sarcasm).
Member since:2005-07-06
Lose disk space? Do you have any idea what superfetch actually does?
Let's say for example you have a processor with a meg of LII cache, however at any one time only half of that cache was actually used and the other half sat empty, waiting to be used. Doesn't really make much sense, does it. Same thing with RAM...why have a gigabyte sitting there empty when Windows could be smart enough to figure what (commonly used) files and applications to stash there.
This has nothing to do with disk space. RTFA.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Jeff Atwood does a good job explaining superfetch in more general terms:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html
Member since:
2006-08-09
If I leave my system alone for few hours or few days, I think it's logical that every ressources goes for the background tasks (deamons, ...). Because the working apps will benefict of this memory.
OK, if I come back later, I know during 20-30 seconds my graphical system is unresponsive, but what's the problem ? I know too that my deamons have running with incrased speed during all this time.
I think a setting like that can be interessant for Desktop only users but should be disabled by default.
Member since:
2005-07-23
Just make their code more efficient? Linux and linux related projects can do it.(KDE, GNOME for example) Apple can do it. Sun has been doing it.
What is it with Microsoft's infatuation with bloated code?
"superfetch" sounds to me just like "cough medicine".
What kind of idiot only treats the symptom? Treat the cause, if not both. At least, that's what a very smart person told me a long time ago...............
Maybe it's just me.
Member since:
2006-01-16
If I would have such a feature on my system, I would disable it.
Quickstart alike crap. My OS trying to notice which applications I use regularly. How annoying.
Do you know the MS Word "Quicksave" feature? It just appends changes to the file instead of rewriting it. So files grow and grow .. quick save, slow load. But they never came to the idea to just zip their bloated document format (well, now it is done, alike OOffice did before).
