Back in November last year, Microsoft announced Unified Update Platform, UUP with the core idea of reducing the downloads sizes of builds or updates on a Windows 10 PC or Mobile.
If you are a Windows Insider, you must have already realized the benefits beginning with the Mobile Build 14959 in November and PCs using UUP starting with Build 14986 in early December.
Microsoft in a blog post, today, shared more details regarding UUP status and what advantages does it bring for an end user in terms of update delivery. Microsoft has already converged technologies in build and publishing systems to enable differential downloads for both PC and Mobile.
A differential download package contains only the changes that have been made since the last time you updated your device, rather than a full build. Differential download packages rely on re-using files on your current OS to reconstruct the newer OS. This could include copying files as-is that have not changed between builds, or it could involve applying “binary deltas” or “diffs” to old files to generate newer files. Differential download packages are smaller and can take a shorter amount of time to download.
The opposite of differential download is a canonical download package. Canonical download packages tend to be larger in size and may take longer to download. With UUP, users can expect their download size to decrease by approximately 35% when going from one major update of Windows to another.
For users on retail build on Anniversary Update, you won’t see much of the difference until you land on the Creators Update. Once you are on the Creators Update, the UUP client code part is also downloaded on your machine and any updates to your system thereafter will be handled by it when you go from one major build to another.
This will certainly make a big difference when downloading newer updates on Mobile, if you are not much concerned about being up to date on PC.
To learn about Unified Update Platform, head to this page
Do let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
