101–110 of 121 posts
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Doesn't seem like any reason that it wouldn't be native.
Agree. But it is a big deal. If the CLR is ported to ARM then any c#/vb code will run very efficiently on ARM without even needing to be recompiled or making use of the x86 emulation. That's a big deal for a corporate environment.
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I'd say Windows CE on ARM devices was attempt #1. Lumia and Surface 1 and 2 were #2.
1. Windows CE on ARM 2. Xbox 360 3. Windows Phone 7 (on leftover chunks of Windows CE) on ARM 4. Windows Phone 8/Windows RT 5. Windows 10 on ARM So, by my count, this might be iteration 6? (Though maybe more like 5 Part 2.)
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I'd say Windows CE on ARM devices was attempt #1. Lumia and Surface 1 and 2 were #2.
1. Windows CE on ARM 2. Xbox 360 3. Windows Phone 7 (on leftover chunks of Windows CE) on ARM 4. Windows Phone 8/Windows RT 5. Windows 10 on ARM So, by my count, this might be iteration 6? (Though maybe more like 5 Part 2.)
Interesting. I must say that I'm surprised that MS didn't give up on Continuum after Intel hosed them by cancelling their Broxton smartphone x86 chip. MS might just be throwing good money after bad. The two keys will be performance and compatibility for the x86 emulation. If they can get it to the point where it's effectively as fast as Intel's low power Atoms while still keeping broad Win32 app compatibility, then M…
> I must say that I'm surprised that MS didn't give up on Continuum after Intel hosed them by cancelling their Broxton smartphone x86 chip. MS might just be throwing good money after bad. Intel didn't hose Microsoft, it hosed Intel. Microsoft was already developing for ARM so nothing changed for Microsoft. Intel stopped developing for smartphones and tablets so something changed for Intel. Windows 10 is free on small…
I'm not sure I follow your logic. Surely you'd agree that implementing Continuum running x86 apps on Microsoft's rumored Surface Phone would have been far easier if Intel hadn't cancelled Broxton and MS had been directly able to use it as the target processor?
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I think Linux beat them both to the point... many years ago.
No way. Linux has never had any sort of cross-architecture binary compatibility story. Certainly nothing that worked as well as Apple's Mixed Mode Manager or Rosetta.
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I think Linux beat them both to the point... many years ago.
> I think Linux beat them both to the point... many years ago. Nope. Windows NT was written to be cross-platform. It wasn't even developed on an x86 processor. And NT development started at the end of the 1980s, before Linus even thought of writing his x86-specific operating system. (Because he only had x86.)
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> I think Linux beat them both to the point... many years ago. Nope. Windows NT was written to be cross-platform. It wasn't even developed on an x86 processor. And NT development started at the end of the 1980s, before Linus even thought of writing his x86-specific operating system. (Because he only had x86.)
Windows NT ran on ARM? That is the platform being referenced. Not just cross-platform in general.
If you have developed a portable OS, it really doesn't matter whether ARM was first or last or inbetween.
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> I must say that I'm surprised that MS didn't give up on Continuum after Intel hosed them by cancelling their Broxton smartphone x86 chip. MS might just be throwing good money after bad. Intel didn't hose Microsoft, it hosed Intel. Microsoft was already developing for ARM so nothing changed for Microsoft. Intel stopped developing for smartphones and tablets so something changed for Intel. Windows 10 is free on small…
> Intel didn't hose Microsoft, it hosed Intel. I'm not sure I follow your logic. Surely you'd agree that implementing Continuum running x86 apps on Microsoft's rumored Surface Phone would have been far easier if Intel hadn't cancelled Broxton and MS had been directly able to use it as the target processor?
The only advantage of having an Intel processor would be for the old-style traditional apps, and if you allow those, you have all sorts of problems. They're not sandboxed like runtime apps, and you can't stop them from eating your battery. It's actually better to run them in an emulator.
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> Intel didn't hose Microsoft, it hosed Intel. I'm not sure I follow your logic. Surely you'd agree that implementing Continuum running x86 apps on Microsoft's rumored Surface Phone would have been far easier if Intel hadn't cancelled Broxton and MS had been directly able to use it as the target processor?
Not at all. The apps were being developed for Windows Runtime. You shouldn't confuse that with the old Win32 API used by traditional Windows software. The only advantage of having an Intel processor would be for the old-style traditional apps, and if you allow those, you have all sorts of problems. They're not sandboxed like runtime apps, and you can't stop them from eating your battery. It's actually better to run t…
That's precisely what MS is allowing. From Thurott's article:
"Even better, Windows 10 on ARM will supply a long-rumored feature: The ability to run 32-bit Win32/x86 desktop applications—Apple iTunes, Adobe Photoshop, Google Chrome, whatever—directly on the system, unchanged."
I suspect that MS probably would have very much preferred not to have to use emulation, which is always a tricky business, for Continuum on the Surface Phone. Curbing resource intensive apps is a vastly less complex engineering problem.
> First, Qualcomm’s System on a Chip (Soc) designs have improved so dramatically in the past four years that their performance rivals that of mainstream Intel Core chipsets for PCs. Hah! > And even better, Microsoft has developed an emulation technology that allows Win32 applications to launch and run unmodified on ARM-based PCs. And to do so with what I am assured is excellent performance. I don't believe it.
> I don't believe it. My understanding is Microsoft actually has some pretty cool and fast tech for this already: the Xbox 360 emulation on Xbox One.