Microsoft Confirms ARM Support for Windows
Who's ready for some Windows on ARM action?
There was a ton of rumors about Microsoft’s keynote speech last night and unfortunately, not all of them were true. One that did come to fruition was that the next version of Windows (which we’re all referring to as Windows 8) will support ARM. Microsoft yesterday confirmed that the next iteration of the company's OS would support System on a Chip (SoC) architectures including ARM-based systems from NVIDIA, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.
It’s big news, but it’s about Windows 8, so don’t expect too much in the way of juicy details. However, Microsoft sent out a press release with a Q&A with Steven Sofinsky, president of the Windows and Windows Live Division at Microsoft and we were afforded a smidge more information regarding Windows on ARM. Sofinsky says hardware accelerated media playback and hardware accelerated Web browsing are among the things users can expect from Windows on ARM. There will, of course, also be Office for ARM, just in case you were starting to get worried.
“We’re committed to making sure that Windows on SoC architectures is a rich Windows experience," Sofinksy said. "Microsoft Office is an important part of customers’ PC experience and ensuring it runs natively on ARM is a natural extension of our Windows commitment to SoC architectures."
"We are making this announcement now to allow greater collaboration across our expanded partner ecosystem so we can bring to market the widest possible set of PCs and devices, from tablets on up, with the next generation of Windows."
Microsoft talked a little about SoC and Windows for ARM last night at its keynote so if you missed the online stream, check out the video below (via VentureBeat) for the 411.
The problem with ARM is that there's only so much return on investment. Intel and AMD are coming out with some pretty efficient x86 processors. Sure, they aren't in a phone-size form factor, yet, but they're getting down to tablet size for sure. The fact that my ARM-based cellphone cost more than a low-end (yet fully capable) x86-based laptop tells me ARM doesn't really have much room to play with in the computer market. Intel isn't making much profit off Atom, so what's left for ARM?
Not seeing Win8 running that good, but then again - in another year or two; ARM CPUs will be 2-3 times more powerful than they are today. Of course, the Win8 will be an ARM version, with x86 code stripped out and who knows what junk.
Otherwise, Google will come from behind and strangle MS with Android.
Good news for NVIDIA; they just gained the ability to make a custum ARM chip, and now ARM can run Windows?
yea nvidia is a major player in arm segment just becouse they have announced a project about making arm cpu, wow really?
This also means Micrsoft will have to modify their dev tools for this, although Visual Studio already supports ARM they probably need to work on better ARM code generation.
Well they already had Tegra and Tegra II. Yeah there aren't alot of devices using them, but it shows Nvidia's ability to produce a ARM soc. If it weren't for external market factors I'm sure it would have been in more devices already.
To me the what's really cool about Windows 8 on ARM is now we can have low power ARM tablets that run a full desktop OS. No omre of these tablets that are nothing more than over sized smartphones that can't make calls.
To state that intel was the main reason we are still on x86 instruction set is totally false. we can all thank AMD for that one when they released the amd64 procs that were 64 and x86.. intel was already deep into production of a new instruction set ala Itanium. and you can say that itanium is slow and all that but if you have ever got to sit down at a server running one they are faster than hell. but thanks to amd intel scrapped the desktop segment of itanium becuase the market wasnt ready to move away from 86 thanks to AMD and there backwards compatible crap so now we are all still running on x86 when if that processor wouldnt have come out we would all be on itanium based systems fyi
Oh and i was told this from the designer at intel when i worked there a few years back right before the core 2 duo was released this is why intel was behind amd at that time becuase they were not even working on x86 anymore.