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New Intel and AMD Chips Will Only Support Windows 10 (pcworld.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Buried in the announcement of the new Kaby Lake (seventh-generation) processors and a rash of incoming notebooks set to use them is the confirmation that they will have a Windows 10 future. Microsoft has been warning people for ages that Kaby Lake will not run on anything older than Windows 10, and it looks like AMD's upcoming Zen chip will be going the same way. Microsoft said, "As new silicon generations are introduced, they will require the latest Windows platform at that time for support. This enables us to focus on deep integration between Windows and the silicon, while maintaining maximum reliability and compatibility with previous generations of platform and silicon." "We are committed to working with Microsoft and our ecosystem partners to help ensure a smooth transition given these changes to Microsoft's Windows support policy," an Intel spokesperson said. "No, Intel will not be updating Win 7/8 drivers for 7th Gen Intel Core [Kaby Lake] per Microsoft's support policy change." An AMD representative was equally neutral. "AMD's processor roadmap is fully aligned with Microsoft's software strategy," AMD chief technical officer Mark Papermaster said, via a company spokeswoman. Slashdot reader MojoKid via HotHardware has some more details on Intel's Kaby Lake 7th Gen Core Series Processors for those yearning to learn more.
-- Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
May I suggest an Honest tag line?
Liberalism: Ideas so good they require an end to the world's largest prison state that has supported fascism for so many years.
This whole thing smells of Microsoft trying to sell more Windows 10, not Intel and AMD trying to sell fewer chips.
It has been a long time since we have seen a break in the backwards compatibility such that deprecated features are actually removed and thus do not support older systems, this is one of those times. It has nothing to do with Windows (aside from older versions not supporting features that didn't exist when they were produced) specifically, just like Linux or macOS, Windows is being updated to support newer processor architectures and redundant features are being removed going forward thus breaking some backwards compatibility.
Is it just that Microsoft was mentioned that people are desperately searching for a conspiracy theory when the reasoning for this move is so obviously just about removal of redundant features?