Windows 10 on ARM

#1

Post by vlangber » Thu, May 11, 2017, 6:35 PM UTC

Re: Windows 10 on ARM

#2

Post by nickhalfasleep » Thu, May 11, 2017, 6:54 PM UTC

Great potential for a Win10 phablet I can develop on that also lets me make phonecalls. Not for big projects, but an anywhere device. Does Win10 support non VoIP calls?

Re: Windows 10 on ARM

#3

Post by faragon » Thu, May 11, 2017, 6:55 PM UTC

If that runs great on phones, and has virtualization support for e.g. running ARM Linux guests, I would change both my Android phone and my Ubuntu laptop for one phone (e.g. Snapdragon 835 or better + 8-12GB RAM + 256GB flash + USB 3.0 OTG), using a dummy screen + keyboard as laptop replacement.

Re: Windows 10 on ARM

#4

Post by platipuss » Thu, May 11, 2017, 6:56 PM UTC

I hope they drop this on the surface 2. It would save it from being a paper weight.

Re: Windows 10 on ARM

#5

Post by daburninatorrr » Thu, May 11, 2017, 6:56 PM UTC

Man, that League of Legends desktop icon on the test machine is such a tease. I would love to know what the status of x86 gaming on ARM devices would be, especially for something competitive that runs on most anything like LoL

Re: Windows 10 on ARM

#6

Post by 0x0 » Thu, May 11, 2017, 6:56 PM UTC

Does the x86/x64 cpu emulation work for JIT code or other self-modifying code? (Copy protected games, for example?) In the linked presentation they just briefly mention doing a load time(?) transpile of x86 to arm64 and caching the result on disk. What about exe packers that map memory rw then rx after unpacking, such as UPX?

Re: Windows 10 on ARM

#7

Post by sxates » Thu, May 11, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

There have been rumors of a 'surface phone' that runs Win 10 (not mobile) for a couple years now. Most expected some kind of future Intel chip to enable that, but ARM support certainly opens up the possibility. Just what Windows phones need - another OS change!

Re: Windows 10 on ARM

#8

Post by niftich » Thu, May 11, 2017, 6:58 PM UTC

Does this emulation work for x86-64 executables too?

EDIT: no [1].

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/7/13866936/microsoft-window...

Re: Windows 10 on ARM

#9

Post by satysin » Thu, May 11, 2017, 6:59 PM UTC

Microsoft are seriously killing it in emulation these days.

First I was amazed with them getting Xbox 360 (PPC) games running at full speed or better on the Xbox One (x86) and now we have x86 on ARM.

They have some wizards working on this stuff.

Edit: I wonder if Dave Cutler is involved in this x86 on ARM stuff? I think he was with the Xbox 360/Xbox One.

Re: Windows 10 on ARM

#10

Post by mtgx » Thu, May 11, 2017, 7:00 PM UTC

HN is probably not the right target for this type of device. Either way we need Windows 10 on ARM to succeed for Intel to have more competition. I also do think it will be successful if it works at least as well as Intel's Atom-based Celeron and Pentium laptop chips, especially in emerging markets.

Intel shot itself in the foot by replacing the Core architecture in mobile Celerons and Pentiums with Atom, and also by starting to rename lower performance Core M chips to Core i3 and Core i5. This will make it easier for ARM and AMD to "catch-up" and even beat Intel at these levels, because Intel got greedy and tried to trick the market with lower-performing chips at the same price points as for previous (and more powerful) generations.