SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 30, 1997 — Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. today announced that Microsoft will license the Intel-developed Application Launch Accelerator software technology. The combination of Intel’s Application Launch Accelerator technology and key advances in the Microsoft® Windows® 98 operating system will significantly shorten the time it takes for software applications to load from the hard disk drive.
“We’ve had phenomenal response since we first introduced the technology last March,” said Patrick Gelsinger, vice president of Intel’s desktop products group. “We have worked closely with Microsoft to integrate this exciting technology with key advancements in Windows 98 to significantly improve the end user’s experience.”
Intel developed the Application Launch Accelerator technology, in conjunction with Microsoft, as part of its platform architecture efforts to improve the performance of PC storage subsystems. Unlike existing defragmentation techniques, which arrange individual files into consecutive clusters, Intel’s Application Launch Accelerator uses new capabilities in Windows 98 to arrange data blocks used during application start-up in a sequential fashion, thereby reducing the amount of random disk access. On a hard disk drive, sequential disk accesses are many times faster than random disk accesses.
As a result of the optimizing algorithm in Intel’s Application Launch Accelerator and advances in Windows 98, end users will see a dramatic reduction in loading time when they open applications on their PCs. For example, when identically configured systems based on Pentium® II processors were compared, one with Windows 98 and Intel’s Application Launch Accelerator technology and one without, three Microsoft Office applications – Word, Microsoft Excel and the PowerPoint® presentation graphics program – running on Windows 95 launched in approximately 3.7 seconds vs. 11.3 seconds. Other applications showed similar improvements in launch times. These technologies will appear in the next beta release of Windows 98, expected to be available later this year.
“We have worked closely with Intel on the Application Launch Accelerator algorithms, which, coupled with the advances we have made in Windows 98, will deliver significant performance benefits for end users,” said Moshe Dunie, vice president, Windows operating systems division at Microsoft. “We are pleased to be able to offer these advancements, which will enhance the overall PC experience, to customers of Windows.”
Intel, the world’s largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of personal computer, networking and communications products. Additional information is available at (http://www.intel.com/pressroom/) .
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