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Windows coming to ARM chips


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Old 11-12-2016, 07:12
Stig
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Full Windows and Win32 applications are coming to ARM chips:
http://www.windowscentral.com/micros...windows-10-arm

This isn't Windows Mobile or Windows Phone, but the full desktop. It's about 10 years too late, but could make for some interesting hybrid devices in the future.
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Old 11-12-2016, 09:20
moox
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This is what windows RT should have been.

I wouldn't rule it out as being too late - personally an even lighter weight windows tablet (that could run recompiled win32 apps - not sure how good emulation is going to be) would be very interesting... (yes there's the surface but it is still a bit too heavy and power hungry)
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Old 11-12-2016, 14:38
zz9
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This is what windows RT should have been.

I wouldn't rule it out as being too late - personally an even lighter weight windows tablet (that could run recompiled win32 apps - not sure how good emulation is going to be) would be very interesting... (yes there's the surface but it is still a bit too heavy and power hungry)
Nevermind. Quoted old specs. The Surface is heavier than the ipad.
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Old 11-12-2016, 15:20
Maxatoria
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Windows always has been multi cpu from the nt4 days with only the boot process being specific in theory, so all it probably would take is a bit of tweaking the code and you'll be able to run it on ARM series chips.

The translation of x86 to ARM would probably be quite easy if done right perhaps with a preload translation system.
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Old 11-12-2016, 15:46
F2kSel
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Didn't the Arm powered Acorn Archimedes run Windows under an emulator.
The advantage Arm had over x86 was that multiple cores didn't need specific coding programs usually just took advantage of it.
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Old 11-12-2016, 17:14
moox
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Windows always has been multi cpu from the nt4 days with only the boot process being specific in theory, so all it probably would take is a bit of tweaking the code and you'll be able to run it on ARM series chips.

The translation of x86 to ARM would probably be quite easy if done right perhaps with a preload translation system.
NT from the beginning was designed to be very easy to port - IIRC they deliberately developed it on a new Intel CPU architecture (i960?), using custom-designed motherboards, specifically so that the developers couldn't use any x86 specific workarounds.

Modern NT on ARM of course already exists. Windows Phone uses it and Windows RT did.
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Old 11-12-2016, 17:39
Stig
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Windows always has been multi cpu from the nt4 days with only the boot process being specific in theory, so all it probably would take is a bit of tweaking the code and you'll be able to run it on ARM series chips.

The translation of x86 to ARM would probably be quite easy if done right perhaps with a preload translation system.
Yes, it's only taken them 23 years to 'tweak the code'.

There were versions of NT for DEC Alpha and PowerPC but hardly anyone used them. Plus you couldn't run ordinary Win32 programs.
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Old 11-12-2016, 17:53
Maxatoria
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Yes, it's only taken them 23 years to 'tweak the code'.

There were versions of NT for DEC Alpha and PowerPC but hardly anyone used them. Plus you couldn't run ordinary Win32 programs.
It was Alpha/Mips they did try with the PE format to make things portable but it never really took off as you needed the relevant runtimes and with generally the Alpha/MIPS stuff sat in the server room as pure file servers and thus never needed to run anything user generated normally.
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Old 11-12-2016, 17:54
TelevisionUser
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This is what windows RT should have been.

I wouldn't rule it out as being too late - personally an even lighter weight windows tablet (that could run recompiled win32 apps - not sure how good emulation is going to be) would be very interesting... (yes there's the surface but it is still a bit too heavy and power hungry)
I'd agree but in this instance, I suspect that Microsoft have left thing too late again (one of their habits perfected in the Ballmer years) so they end up being also rans. Third place at best for Microsoft now whatever product or metric is being considered.
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Old 11-12-2016, 18:18
misar
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The key advance seems to be provision of a 32bit x86 emulator out of the box so that you can run standard binaries of Win32 desktop applications on ARM CPUs. That is not something that Windows RT could do and is not a "minor tweak" of the Windows code, especially if you want total compatibility and good performance.

I find Windows desktop applications on a small x86 convertible very useful. Being able to do the same thing on the equivalent of a large phone (or even on a phone) with ARM battery life would be great.
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