Arun Sirpal points out that sqlservr.exe is a lot smaller in 2012 and up as compared to 2008 R2:
I never really noticed the difference before, but I understand why.
From 2012 onwards the architecture changed, it has been broken up into multiple DLLs. I can see the extra DLL files within the BINN folder these being sqllang.dll and sqlmin.dll where each are roughly 30MB each.
Makes me a bit curious as to the reason behind the breakout.
Perhaps this makes it easier to patch/update and test those patches?
That’s a good thought. Separating the code out into additional DLLs could perhaps make it easier for different teams to work concurrently without breaking each other’s work.