News - It’s official: the next Windows will support ARM

[HEXUS]

Microsoft has bowed to the inevitable and will finally support the ARM instruction set on full Windows.

Read more.

[TheAnimus]

And its the windows tablet stratergy.

[Aisalem]

I'm just thinking if it will be full desktop version or just tablet one that will not support all the software for "normal" Windows due to lack of x86 instructions.
If Microsoft will end up creating the software x86 instruction emulator then ARM might not have enough power to run it.

[TheAnimus]

Well yes and no.

If you've programmed it in .Net then it will run on it surely? If you've programed it in Java... haha no one does that any more.

The thing is, this could be bad news for intel. The Revo PC type machines which can be had for <£140 excluding a monitor but everything else. They might just get that little bit cheaper without any intel costs and just a SoC.

[scaryjim]

I'm just thinking if it will be full desktop version or just tablet one that will not support all the software for "normal" Windows due to lack of x86 instructions.

The article suggests it'll be the full desktop version. How they'll handle code compilation between ARM and x86 versions is anyone's guess (although, as TheAnimus says, if you've developed in .NET it shouldn't be a problem, so I guess it'll be another boost to the .NET framework... ).

[miniyazz]

Not until Win8 is released though, obviously, so a long time for hardware/software to develop!

[dangel]

The article suggests it'll be the full desktop version. How they'll handle code compilation between ARM and x86 versions is anyone's guess (although, as TheAnimus says, if you've developed in .NET it shouldn't be a problem, so I guess it'll be another boost to the .NET framework... ).

There's nothing exclusive about .NET that makes it a must - that it doesn't really 'compile' to machine native code gives it an edge but already as a Windows developer you can write programs and simply recompile them for different architectures. For example a Win32 program or even an MFC one have support on Win CE and this needn't be any different. All MS really need to provide is the same Win32 API and the same set of frameworks (be they .NET or MFC) on the ARM platform and developers can pretty much just recompile binaries. In fact it could end up being easier if ARM has fuller implementations than CE did (compact .NET, Win32 and MFC were all reduced). MS aren't adopting the WP7 strategy - a silverlight (or .NET) layer on top of the OS core here (or so it seems) so I'm assuming they'll try and offer a 'full' platform implementation. In fact, they'll need to because very little of their own software is written in .NET in reality (Win7 and Office appears to be entirely bereft of it).

This leads me onto my big bugbear with MS at the moment - their overall developer strategy is muddy to say the least - Silverlight versus WPF, Direct2D floating around (completely unmanaged, doesn't have a framework or common controls set using it) as a GDI replacement (a very good one) and that's all before we get to a three platform strategy - WP7, Win7/8 and now Win8 SOC (ARM). That's not a big problem so long as they keep the latter two as close as possible. If I can fire up VS2011 and hit F7 and punch out two binaries with no effort for SOC and x86 then no big deal, but the elephant in the room is the UI which for tablets has to be very different. It'll be interesting to see quite how this will be tackled and at what level (and for which technologies - .NET? Win32? Common Controls?).

All that said, f'me they're doing Windows on ARM!!!! YAY! I'm amazed and quite excited tbh - MS seem to be doing some very solid work of late..

[TheAnimus]

Well I'd definately say that WPF or Silverlight are much better for tablet dev than HTML5, its one of the funny jokes I find that people believe jobs/balmer when they say they back it. They sure do, just as the poor mans choice.

The APIs for multi-touch etc are better in the world of WPF/WPFe.