Microsoft is today introducing a solution to the one problem that has plagued its Windows operating system for the past God knows how many years. Large sluggish updates. This has been a major point of concern for many users, especially an Insider, like me, who receives a new preview build each week. But, Redmond has today announced a next generation update delivery technology, currently in testing phase, called Unified Update Platform (UUP).
With the introduction of this tech, Microsoft is trying to significantly reduce the download size of updates on PCs and mobile simultaneously. The company further says that users can expect “their download size to decrease by approximately 35% when going from one major update of Windows to another.”
But how does UUP make this possible? Bill Karagounis, a Windows program manager explains the same in the blog post by saying that the company has converged technologies within its build and publishing system. This enables the user to download only the portion of changes that have been introduced since they last updated their devices. This update process has been termed as differential downloading.
In addition, Microsoft is also introducing changes to the ‘Check Update’ process on Windows 10. The company is planning to reduce the amount of data sent over to the client as well as the amount of processing required to check for and apply these updates successfully.
This means that with the roll out of UUP, the evaluation of which parts of the update need to be downloaded and installed on any device will be conducted on the server side by Microsoft. Thus, it will be spending more processing power to make the Windows update process faster and seamless for its users.
This would be particularly important for the mobile OS which not only has restricted processing power but also less memory and RAM as compared to desktops/laptops. Previously mobile users needed to complete the update process in two hops, but this update will also reduce the same to just one hop. Thus, UUP will have logic in the client to fall back on the canonical build and then execute the process in a single go.
This will be an underlying change to the core of the Windows platform, nothing on the surface would be affected by the same. Microsoft plans to roll out the change in stages, starting today with mobile devices. It will then start using UUP on PC Insider builds, followed by IoT and HoloLens shortly after. So, get ready for lighting fast updates!
