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Windows 8 ARM Will Not Support Legacy Software
An anonymous reader writes "Intel, speaking out of turn and damaging its intimate relationship with Microsoft, has revealed that legacy x86-compiled software will not work on the ARM version of Windows 8. Microsoft has promised that the Office suite will be available on Windows 8 ARM, but beyond that, nothing. While this means there won't be many compatible apps at launch, it also means this will be the first full-bodied version of Windows that won't (initially) be susceptible to viruses and malware..."
Intel went so far as to say that legacy software would "not ever" run on ARM. To do that they have to have to have the stick of software patents to prevent an ARM->x86 emulator.
This is not good for Microsoft. It means their relationship with Intel is irretrievably broken. The WinTel alliance is no more.
As consumers we can win from this. Without the constraint of making the bloated Windows OS run on their chips, Intel can dive into low power. Without the glacial software development lifecycle in Redmond Intel can bring out new stuff faster. That's good stuff.
The distant threat is that when Intel seeks a market they want all of it. They're late to this game and their Atom chips don't cut it yet - their promises are some 24-36 months out, and ARM and Microsoft are not going to be standing still in the meantime. They're promising "best in class mobile video tech" but I swear to God if they buy Imagination Technologies to cut out ARM mobile chipset vendors I'm going to fucking do everything in my power to kill them. That would shift Intel from the "Invention of technologies" camp to the "prevention of technologies" camp. I'm not OK with that.
But if what Intel means is that they're going to let the legacy go and deliver the best low-power chips they can, that's a good thing. Your PC doesn't have to burn the watts it does. There are lots of folk in the third world with valuable input who don't have watts. It does not take a kilowatt gaming rig to work spreadsheets any longer.
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It's not like Microsoft don't want you to use .NET anyway.
All Microsoft need to do is support the CLR runtime and framework under the new version and anything running on .NET that doesn't call unmanaged code will work straight away.
Same for anything running on Java, and it's not like that doesn't run on other architectures already. That means productivity apps like OpenOffice/etc will also work.
It's not all doom and gloom!
... the software publishers will just compile their stuff for ARM. How hard can that be?
This just in, x86 and ARM instruction sets are NOT compatible! Everyone panic! Blame MS! No, wait... Sony must have had a hand in this!
File this under no shit, Sherlock.
incompatibility with existing applications will be the driving force of the inevitable "windows 8 arm edition app store" and the pile of money microsoft expects to make from it.
won't (initially) be susceptible to viruses and malware
Well, now, I wouldn't speak too soon. There will undoubtedly be a beta release or a leak which will give malware authors ample time to develop zero-day viruses. And with Windows 8 exploring very different terrain this time around, there's bound to be a plethora of exploits just waiting for someone to coax them out of hiding (or plain sight).
The article isn't completely accurate. It fails to specify that it will not natively run x86-based code on Win8 ARM. There's no valid reason why x86 code won't be able to run inside a virtual x86 machine running on top of the ARM architecture.
The summary also makes this statement which is not accurate to the version in the article:
it also means this will be the first full-bodied version of Windows that won't (initially) be susceptible to viruses and malware
The actual quote is that it won't be susceptible to existing viruses and malware.
They also assume that all code will have to be re-written from the ground up, which is completely false. Most application code will need to be ported, and in many cases security holes which are due to fundamental design flaws (as opposed to coding mistakes) will simply be ported along with it. So yes, a lot of existing malware will break but that's no reason to lay down and assume that developers who made crappy software in the past will suddenly cease their shitty practices.
But it was Intel who said this! And no, it can't be that Intel just pointed out the obvious. After all, it's Intel. They are in bed with Microsoft. They are obviously evil. I'm sure there's an x86 core hidden somewhere in ARM which is only disabled because of Intel! After all, how could a processor work without an x86 core? :-)
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839*929
So it can integrate with your Windows desktop without needing itunes or some other third party sync utility? So it can run applications developers with the familiar (to the millions of windows developers) .net framework?
If the hardware is decent, battery life is decent, and the UI/integration is slick, the OS it runs is irrelevant. Instead of "why run windows", why not? Microsoft have Windows already developed and clearly cross architecture.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
The problem with those cheap wince based laptops, is they're advertised as running windows, which means people buying them often expect that they run the same windows they may already have on a desktop, or have at work etc... Once they get it, they are usually severely disappointed and this usually results in a very high return rate.
Another ARM version of windows is likely to do the same thing, disappoint users, fragment the brand and end up with lots of returns...
An ARM based version of linux on the other hand could sell very well, if its properly marketed... Users would have no preconceptions about it, and take the devices for what they are. Just make sure there is a proper linux distro, not the crippled versions that came with the first round of x86 netbooks... And make sure the benefits of linux are well advertised to users, especially the package manager.
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I think I speak for many here when I say that the editors need to, well, edit a bit more. The summary is full of bias which should be reserved for the comments. Can we please just have factual summaries in future?
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...if it won't run Window's software?. Most everything else is a simple compile away from user's being able to be run on any device they own. Microsoft is really going to screw the pooch here if they don't ensure compatibility with existing software.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Because this move resets the software scene. There won't be "applications that they wanted on them" anyway, so it really is a golden opportunity to throw a proper, Joe User-oriented Linux distro out there.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-intel-executive-was-wrong-about-windows-8 Long story short, this statement from intel is incorrect. But guess what: intel is a chip manufacturer that sells x86 cpu's and has sold its arm devision a few years back, how much more biased do you want a source of information. In reality it will most likely be an ugly vm running your old non recompilable software slowly.
PPC, MIPS, Alpha, IA64 and i860 i believe...
What do all these have in common? Noone used them.
At the time, these architectures offered vastly superior performance to x86, but couldn't run legacy windows apps or legacy apps designed for other OS that typically ran on the hardware. Since there were so few users, virtually no commercial software was ever ported to non x86 windows and very few people ever even bothered to port open source code to them.
MS' biggest strength - proprietary lockin, is also their biggest weakness...
If your going to move to an incompatible hardware platform, and lose access to your legacy software in the process then you'd be a fool to run windows... Linux already runs on ARM, will not lock you in like windows is designed to, costs nothing, and already runs 99% of the same software the x86 version does.
And ofcourse if everyone is running open source code, the architecture becomes irrelevant and we can switch again very easily if something better than ARM comes along.
It's also possible to have a range of architectures for different purposes, ARM or MIPS for low power devices, perhaps x86, IA64 or Alpha for high performance devices where power usage isn't a concern.
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Windows CE only shares the name with desktop Windows.
It's basically a different OS.
Windows 8 (as I unterstand) will be the same OS compiled for a different platform.
But yes, Microsoft has experience with mulitplattform OS': Windows NT ran on Alpha and other architectures.
People who bought netbooks didn't really wanted a netbook - what they wanted was a very small, mobile and cheap version of the notebook computer they used before (hence in the end most netbooks came with Windows). Unfortunately this combination makes for very poor usability.
This is what killed the netbook market and why the iPad is reigning supreme. It takes a while for people to figure out that what they originally wanted from a particular product does not perform as they originally envisaged.
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I used NT4 on Alpha - there were even beta copies of Windows 2000 for the Alpha.
It also had FX!32 which was fairly decent at allowing x86 binaries to run under Alpha NT4 which meant companies didn't need to port software specifically for the Alpha.
So uh, has wine been ported to windows yet? Just asking ;)
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
And that is the really shocking thing that will actually kill the platform - fragmentation. All of these different versions will be incompatible with each other, forwards and backwards. Intel must be laughing their asses off.
The lack of a standard "ARM platform" has already been a big problem for Linux netbooks. They're all x86 because each ARM platform is different and requires a different BSP, making ongoing support a complete nightmare. I have to say, I really expected Microsoft to force the ARM SoC makers to standardise.
The lack of any sort of x86 emulator is really the icing on the cake. The big advantage of Windows is gone. But I suppose there is still a possibility of a third-party emulator like the original Virtual PC for Mac.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
While this is obviously not aimed at desktops, couldn't this version of windows run on ARM-enabled desktops?
And if not desktops, maybe TVs, info-kiosks, ATMs etc. = semi-embedded machines with a limited scope and not really needing 100% backward compatibility. It's enough for a few critical pieces of software to be recompiled. Smart, internet enabled TVs and refrigerators ruining Android might become a huge growth market in the near future, and Microsoft clearly wants a piece.
Also, let's not forget about dynamic translation. Android applications themselves aren't naive ARM, rather JIT-compiled bytecode. I don't see why Microsoft can't take the same route as Apple (Rosetta) and reinvent Windows on ARM, while keeping low-performance backward compatibility for performance insensitive applications.
Who wrote the article is an idiot. Properly written managed .NET code will _at worst_ require recompilation. Ask yourself why MS has been pushing managed code like hell...
At worst, it will call down to some ancient DLL for which the source code has been lost or for which the vendor decides it's not worth porting.
This just in, x86 and ARM instruction sets are NOT compatible! Everyone panic! Blame MS! No, wait... Sony must have had a hand in this!
File this under no shit, Sherlock.
I think what intel is saying is that MS are:
that Windows 8 is going to drop some of legacy API support available in WIndows 7 - and while Win8 x86 is going to offer a "classic" mode this won't be available on ARM (...I wonder if this is a reference to the existing virtualization-based legacy mode in Win7/Vista?)
Of course, what Microsoft gets and Intel apparently doesn't is that Win8/ARM's main competitors will not be other Windows machines (as was the case when Windows NT briefly supported other processors such as Alpha) but against iOS and Android in the mobile world and Linux in the server world. If Win8/ARM netbooks can run "geniune" MS Office and Win8/ARM servers talk "genuine" Active Directory and Exchange Server, along with lots of "modern" windows software written in .NET, some people will choose them over iOS, Android or Linux. Intel will surely be the solution of choice for corporates wanting to run their 1990-era dBaseII systems - but even that market will eventually fade away.
As for tablets and smartphones - they'll need custom-designed software anyway so legacy is irrelevant.
(* Hell, I was running x86 PC software via an emulator on my ARM3-based desktop back in 1990 - but the ARM3 was a desktop superchip that smoked the 286s of the day... maybe ARM will make a triumphant return to the desktop, but it will need a 64-bit makeover and a FPU).
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Would not help at all. Wine is two things, its an implementation of the Windows api and a loader. If you have the source you can compile your windows api application for other some architectures using winelib. So you might be able to port your program to ARM Linux with it. You would not need winelib on Windows because Windows will provide the windows api.
You can't use wines loader and server functions to run x86 code on ARM period, it does not provide a virtual machine. All it can do is let you run binaries build for x86 windows on other x86 platforms. So wine is useless for running legacy software on ARM Windows.
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How does releasing Windows 8 for arm and not supporting x86 apps equate to "the first full-bodied version of Windows that won't (initially) be susceptible to viruses and malware...?"
Does that mean that Windows 8 is closing all of the security holes that allow for viruses and malaware? If so, why would it just be the arm version that is protected? On the other hand, if they are not closing the security holes, how does using arm protect it? Just because a virus will have to be rewritten to execute on the arm platform does not mean the platform won't be susceptible to viruses and malware, unless the OS is changed to protect against it.
No he earned it by understanding the limits of his knowledge and asking pertinent questions.
Exactly! Historically, Intel does not have a great track record at succeeding in the marketplace with new architectures.
If we just go with Intel:
i432 Super Object Oriented - lots of transistors, super CISCy. Very slow too, but probably could have been sped up decently (half the problem was the compiler and lack of caches)
i860 - Very fast for it's day as long as you don't need to respond to a trap or interrupt... Evil to program. Great for an accelerator but not a great general purpose CPU
i960 - This one was really nice, but started competing with x86 and got killed. (Some of the people from the i432
Itanium.- We all know how that's worked out.
Intel tried to get everyone off x86 with Itanium. This didn't happen, partly because AMD and MICROSOFT got together and did x86-64. That isn't to say that the folks at Intel aren't great - and they don't make great CPU's. They just seem to have a problem with almost like a 2nd system effect.
So what's kept Intel alive during all the above failures? x86 lock in. There's a strong argument to be made for source based distributions, and I'm sure that's the nightmare of any chip maker. All that needs to happen is for someone to come out with a decent compiler for your new architecture (not necessarily easy but doable), the code (which hopefully running on many architectures is fairly portable) to be recompiled and kerbam.
That's like what NexGen guys were going to do with the Nx586. Wakeup in x86 mode, but allow a programmer to say 'Give me the underlying architecture'.
I would never count Intel out though. Many people thought that Intel was toast during the march of the RISCs. PPC came out, there was the Power PC reference machine. We were all going to run OS/2, Taligent, Pink and Apple OS on it. For a while there the fastest NT boxes were MIPS then Alpha. Then Intel came out with the P6 and it was so much faster than the P5 that they kept everyone on x86.
Intel labs surely has x86's that blow the socks off anything out there. So don't count them out.
I have a soft spot in my heart for ARM because of how it came to be. Google Roger Wilson and history of ARM and you will read a great story of a few people with very few resources making an awesome processor. They got their inspiration from Bill Mensch and the folks at the Western Design Center. This was after Acorn tried all the main players in the future CPU's for performance and thought they all sucked. e.g. 68K, NS16032/32016 etc etc.
The point is not whether it was emulated or not. The day they shipped it, all apps kept working.
With windows, MS is announcing that the day they'll ship it, no apps at all are going to work.
That's a hell of a difference. Plus the GP was bitching about the fact that "It's a different architecture, of course apps will not work." It could. It won't.
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Easy: If people buy a Linux laptop and software doesn't work on it, they blame Linux. If people buy a Windows laptop and software doesn't work on it, they blame the software.
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Since Linux runs well on ARM, then I don't see what the big deal is about not being able to run legacy Windows apps in Win 8. All you'd have to do would be to install Linux dual-boot on your Windows 8 machine, and run your legacy Windows apps under Wine in Linux. Maybe I still need more coffee...
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Your not understanding, every time apple changed platform they increased the performance and speed. In this case its the opposite (one day arm may be at a similar performance but not now). Much much harder to get an emulator to work on slower equipment. My analogy should of said its like trying to play a PlayStation game on a Nintendo 64. There is a reason apple used ios on the iphone and its not touch.
What is preventing ARM from competing performance wise? Is there something inherent to the architecture that prevents a company like AMD or Intel from licensing the architecture and producing a six-core beast running at 4 GHz? I understand that ARM is optimized for low power consumption, but if you were to slap a big, honkin heat-sinc and fan on one, like you have to do with a x86 chip, and give up any powersaving features that rob performance, is there any reason why an ARM chip wouldn't outperform an x86 one?
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"Intel’s statements during yesterday’s Intel Investor Meeting about Microsoft’s plans for the next version of Windows were factually inaccurate and unfortunately misleading. From the first demonstrations of Windows on SoC, we have been clear about our goals and have emphasized that we are at the technology demonstration stage. As such, we have no further details or information at this time."
When i first read the post in my rss reader I was (like most people here) going "well, duh"...
But to be fair, if you read the article its a little more in depth than that. However, lets go back a number of years to the days of windows NT 3 - it came on PPC, MIPs, etc (it was also the last platform to do so in the window suite). It wasn't just an x86 platform. However, not many people ran Windows NT either, so the uptake was (in a word) minimal. I think alot of the thinking back then was "why would i want to run windows on a MIP's machine when i have OS "... ultimately the platforms were doomed simply because there just wasnt either the user base or the support for those architectures... Itanium is another example of this particular nightmare/failure (when compared with amd comparatively cheaper 64bit verison of the x86 chipset).
However, DEC Alpha was a bit different, it had an embedded way of running the x86 chip's instruction set, and so maybe no one will come along and write a set of hardware capable of translating x86 instructions back to ARM's core. BUT, thats exactly how the AMD chips used to work, risc core translated up to an x86 instruction set. That in itself doesnt really solve the problem because you'd still want to run x86 windows on top of your x86-to-arm core.
But dont kid yourself that there will be no apps day one for ARM platform for windows cause you can guarentee windows wont go in alone, they'll bring a host of developers along with them and probably apply some incentives for using it.
Also, while the windows core may have failed on PPC, MIP's, etc, the reasons for its success didnt exist - this is not true of the arm platform. Not only is it the "cheap" platform (which is what x86 used to be back in the win nt 3 days), its also small and power friendly. Its also capable of doing alot more then just running Windows. Windows 8 may not be a huge success on ARM, and hopefully thats not going to make MS go "we'll drop arm" cause ARM really has some huge potential both at the desktop and the server, and I hope microsoft see that potential as something they can work with in the long term. Hopefully, their dev tools make it relatively easy to target both arm and/or x86.
As for the virus/malware comment, as many people have pointed out, the bugs will probably translate across in the porting process - however, we'll probably just get a whole host of new ones to add to it... then again, flash and java wont care whether its arm or x86 (and who knows what to expect of .net really?)...
You misunderstand. You appear to think I am talking about drivers, but I am really not. The BSP (board support package) is a much lower-level entity than that. While it does contain drivers, they are drivers for things that the OS needs immediately and cannot load at a later stage, such as the interrupt controller and the timer. The location and size of usable RAM come from the BSP, which will also specify the interrupt mapping and the locations of peripheral controllers such as the PCI configuration register. Clearly, without these critical details, the OS cannot do anything at all.
The x86 BSP for Linux is here. There is one basic BSP, and a few special cases for improved support of unusual sorts of PC.
The ARM BSPs for Linux are here. There are more than 40, and this does not account for every ARM platform.
You are surely right that one kernel could include multiple BSPs and pick one after identifying the host architecture somehow. Tricky, but possible. However, even once achieved, this has practical problems. It is much better to standardise on one platform, because standardising means less compiling, less testing, fewer things to go wrong, and lower support costs. This is good for software vendors, OEMs, and users. It would be much easier to produce Ubuntu for ARM if ARM meant "one platform" rather than "every platform is different and very low-level parts of the kernel must support all of them".
Compatibility and interoperability also mean choice. If your manufacturer stops producing updates for your netbook, then it doesn't matter. You can use the same updates as everyone else.
Finally, the problems that prevent Windows booting on motherboard X when installed on motherboard Y are nothing to do with the BSP and everything to do with drivers that are loaded at a later stage.
You're an immobile computer, remember?