Microsoft is tailoring Windows 7 to solid-state drives. Mum's the word on the matter as far as the Redmond giant is concerned, but this will no longer be the case come November 2008. Starting with the Windows 7 road show scheduled to debut with PDC2008, Microsoft promised to unveil the successor of Windows Vista to the world. Between November 5 and 7, at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference 2008, Microsoft plans to detail the enhancements introduced in the next iteration of the Windows client, in order to make it play nice with solid-state drives. 

“PC systems that have solid-state drives (SSDs) are shipping in increasing volumes. Microsoft is working with the industry as overall experience with SSD technologies grows, which results in planned Windows enhancements that take advantage of the latest updates to standardized command sets, such as ATA,” reads the synopsis for the “Windows 7 Enhancements for Solid-State Drives” WinHEC session, which will offer the audience an insight into the “file system optimizations, best-practice information on design, and thoughts on the future of SSDs and their role in Windows.”

Via the “Design Tradeoffs for Solid-State Disk Performance” session, Microsoft essentially admits that the SSDs are catalyzing a revolution for storage systems. The event will highlight the compromises in terms of design that are necessary in order to deliver superior performance for solid-state disks. The Redmond company will even throw various configurations in the same arena, and assess the performance of the products via a trace-driven simulator, while also taking into consideration workload traces generated by a real system.

In addition, the “How Windows and SSDs Can Provide the Best User Experience” panel will reveal that “there has currently been strong collaboration between Windows and our industry partners in support of solid-state drive (SSD) technologies. SSDs continue to be a revolutionary technology that will continue to require close partnering to be successful. This panel discussion focuses on future collaborative opportunities to converge on the solutions that provide the best user experience possible with Windows and SSDs.”