A few thoughts on how Finder is so much faster

[snverhallen]

Other than being a Cocoa app now and 64-bit support of course, I think Finder got so much faster especially with folders with a lot of content (like Apps folder) because it seems to load icon previews after it loads the file(s); where as (in my exp.)

Leopard seemed to try and load the files and icon previews at the same time then show you the contents, where as in SL I see the file first and then it loads the icon preview.

 

[drlunanerd]

Snow Leopard leverages compression in the filesystem now to bring performance benefits too.
Read this for more info

 

[rpp3po]

The biggest speed improvement is probably due to asynchronous design, letting it do multiple things in parallel, instead of each task having to wait for the completion of the former. This leads to much better CPU utilization when (slow) disk access is involved.

 

[TranceNW]

On a similar note, anybody know how they've managed to increase the speed of time machine backups?