Next Generation of Windows To Run On ARM Chip

Hugh Pickens writes "Sharon Chan reports in the Seattle Times that at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft showed the next generation of Windows running natively on an ARM chip design, commonly used in the mobile computing world, indicating a schism with Intel, the chip maker Microsoft has worked with closely with throughout the history of Windows and the PC. The Microsoft demonstration showed Word, PowerPoint and high definition video running on a prototype ARM chipset made by Texas Instruments, Nvidia. 'It's part of our plans for the next generation of Windows,' says Steve Sinofsky, president of Windows division. 'That's all under the hood.' According to a report in the WSJ, the long-running alliance between Microsoft and Intel is coming to a day of reckoning as sales of tablets, smartphones and televisions using rival technologies take off, pushing the two technology giants to go their separate ways. The rise of smartphones and more recently, tablets, has strained the relationship as Intel's chips haven't been able to match the low power consumption of chips based on designs licensed from ARM. Intel has also thumbed its nose at Microsoft by collaborating with Microsoft archrival Google on the Chrome OS, Google's operating system that will compete with Windows in the netbook computer market. 'I think it's a deep fracture,' says venture capitalist Jean-Louis Gassee regarding relations between Microsoft and Intel."

Comments

Re:But but but but but....

[raddan]

But also, Apple customers are used to breathlessly thanking The Steve for making their lives momentarily miserable. As long as they're promised to receive Teh New Shiny, and that all of their problems will be solved in the next iteration, Apple customers will do it.

Microsoft customers are different. Microsoft's main selling point for the last decade, whether it was true or not, was lower TCO. Bean-counters love Microsoft, and crusty old entrenched IT managers love Microsoft as well. And Microsoft's customers have poured millions into Microsoft's enterprise technology, all of which was tied closely to x86 until .NET. I know a guy who works for Philips-- when Microsoft deprecated an API that Philps had heavily invested in, Philips complained, and Microsoft un-deprecated it.

I think the main point is that Apple's important customers are largely home end-users. Microsoft's important customers are businesses. Businesses tend to be a bit more conservative.

BTW, I'm not sure the "emulated x86" platitude holds anymore. x86 chips themselves have emulated the x86 instruction set for quite awhile now. They're something like RISC inside now... Whether that means that ARM can emulate x86 well, I don't know, but it is clearly possible to do well.