Windows 7 Takes More Advantage Of Multi-Core CPUs

Microsoft is making efforts with Windows 7 to have it accommodate parallel processing better and take more advantage of today's multi-core CPUs in order to gain more performance for the operating system and its applications. However, it will take future versions of Windows to take full advantage of parallel processing, when the architecture of Windows will be based on managed code.

The problem with dual core, triple core, quad core and other multi-core processors is that software can rarely take full advantage of them. Because of the way software is being designed today, there are very good chances that when one core runs a certain part of the software's code, and another core runs a different part, if the two parts are dependent on each other, one of them will fail if the other one doesn't finish on time.
Intel has strongly encouraged developers to target multi-core CPUs with their code, and Microsoft is taking a step towards that by changing some of the design of Windows 7 to accommodate and take advantage of all the available cores. Although the basis for Windows 7 will remain the same as for Windows Vista, a series of tweaks will help Windows 7 take advantage of the newer CPUs.
For future versions of Windows, Microsoft plans to replace the Windows core with fully managed code, that is designed specifically with parallel processing in mind.