Windows on ARM is about to get lots of apps thanks to new x64 emulation | Hacker News Reader

Windows on ARM is about to get lots of apps thanks to new x64 emulation

theverge.com

17 pointsslipheen11 comments

What are the actual benefits of these Windows Arm machines?

All of the benefits we have seen of Arm devices completely disappear when you put Windows on them. I can’t imagine a Windows Arm computer actually having good battery life if it has to spend all of its time doing emulation.

On top of that. Windows runs horribly on the type of energy efficient, relatively low resource devices like ChromeBooks and iPads.

Not to mention that outside of Apple designs, Arm processors are really not that performant.

Yes I know Amazon is doing custom silicon for servers and networking chips. But that isn’t really relevant.

Does anyone know why there's been a long delay for x64 support? Performance problems? Or did some specific x86 patent expire?

Patents. SSE2 and some other extensions are mandatory for x86_64, patents expired only recently.

Glad to see it! I'm hoping to see more ARM laptops on the Windows side as well.

Can anyone comment on the advantages/disadvantages of Microsoft's approach to running x86 code on ARM versus Apple's? (As far as I understand it, Apple is using some kind of ahead of time recompilation, while Microsoft is using emulation?)

The main advantage is that knowing Apple’s past transitions (68k -> ppc -> Intel) they will get third party developers to write native software and not be dependent on the emulator. Apple will then drop the emulation layer and have a more efficient platform.

Microsoft both never drops backwards compatibility and third party developers never transition.

Why can't people just recompile their code?

If the developer doesn’t open source their code or is dead, you can’t?

How often is death the issue? Surely it's mostly corporate apps where they just don't see the install base to do it right?

How often is the death of a human the issue? Some

How often is the death of the team or death of the budget for a team the issue? Often. There some some companies that paid to have software created and live as long as people still purchase that software so they do the very minimum to keep it going. That is Enterprise software and why Microsoft does so much work on backward compatibility. Check out this blog, Raymond Chen is a long time Microsoft employee that writes about the lengths they go to make old software work the the latest version of Windows https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/

The company probably dosen't want to support a somewhat esoteric(in comparison to the sprawling empire that is x86) architecture that will compose .5% of their users and make 50% of the fuss. I'm a linux user, I know how it feels.

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