InstallAware X16 launching on Friday this week builds packages 16 (sixteen) times faster using its new Parallel Build Engine, recompiles Windows setups for macOS and Linux.
San Francisco, CA, August 7, 2023 – InstallAware Software, the technology leader in software installation, repackaging, and virtualization solutions for app developers and enterprises, is launching InstallAware X16 on Friday this week. InstallAware is the most flexible platform for traditional and agile development teams creating Linux, macOS, Windows and Azure software installers; as well as MSIX, APPX, App-V Virtualization, and agentless/royalty-free InstallAware Virtualization packages.
As raw CPU speeds have stopped scaling for decades, it has become harder to extract more performance out of modern devices during demanding package creation tasks such as compression. A constant GHz rating brings a seeming halt to Moore’s infamous law, while installer payloads continue to grow from generation to generation. Modern consumer hardware ships with an astounding number of CPU cores – 32 in the current iteration of both AMD and Intel devices – but it can be very hard to directly translate this to increased performance. InstallAware X16’s new parallel build engine addresses this issue, completing builds an astounding 16 (sixteen) times faster than its earlier version when run on 32 core CPUs!
Furthermore, the cores found in modern CPUs are no longer identical; being split into high-performance and efficiency parts instead. While the premise behind efficiency parts is sound – delivering increased power savings at the expense of reduced performance – the way it has been implemented in current Intel CPU’s is frequently a cure worse than the disease; whereby the power savings realized do not yet offset the loss in performance: While the momentary power draw is reduced, the increase in processing duration is to such an extent that it would have been more efficient to run the task on higher performance cores with full power draw for a shorter duration, thus defeating the purpose. Also new in InstallAware X16 is the ability to assign CPU core affinity masks to build tasks, which is a fancy way of saying that demanding compression tasks can be instructed to run on high-performance CPU cores instead of low-performance efficiency cores, definitively working around this operating system task scheduling problem.
InstallAware X16 is also the very first version of InstallAware to compile existing Windows setup projects for Linux and macOS targets. The transition is seamless, down to rendering existing Windows dialogs pixel-perfect on macOS and Linux operating systems; and the recompilation requires zero source code changes in most cases. Setup script commands intelligently mutate to support new OS architectures, without the introduction of code-bloating platform specific conditionals. Vendor-native features such as Apple Notarization for macOS and GTK2/Qt5 widget sets for Linux are fully supported. Best of all, the IDE, setup engine, and indeed the entire toolchain run natively, without any Java or emulation!
InstallAware X16 concludes its roundup of new features by adding in support for the latest application runtimes shipping from Redmond, including .NET 7.0.9, .NET 6.0.20, .NET 5.0.17, .NET Framework 4.8.1, SQL Server 2022, and Visual C++ Runtimes 2015-2022. These runtimes are added to existing projects in a single-click, and optionally downloaded at installation time only when required.
About InstallAware Software
InstallAware Software, founded in 2003, is the leading Cloud Infrastructure Company with its laser sharp focus on bullet-proof enterprise software deployment and repackaging – now supporting Linux and macOS targets as first-class citizens, in addition to Windows. InstallAware has been recognized by multiple awards coming from Microsoft, SDTimes "Leader of the Software Development Industry", Visual Studio Magazine Reader's Choice, ComponentSource, WindowsITPro, among other recognition. InstallAware X16 is available in a free edition for all Visual Studio users and paid editions with prices starting at $395. For a fully functional 14-day trial and more information, visit www.installaware.com.
Jason Strathmore
InstallAware Software
336 Guerrero
San Francisco, CA 94103
415 358 4094
jase@installaware.com
http://www.installaware.com/
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