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Windows 10 On ARM Will Support x86 Apps From Outside the Store (liliputing.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Liliputing: First announced last year, Microsoft provided an update on Windows 10 ARM at the MS Build developer conference today. And the company confirmed that not only would Windows 10 ARM be able to run legacy apps developed for computers with x86 processors but you'd be able to just download any old Win32 app from the internet, install it, and run it on a computer running Windows 10 ARM. In other words, Windows 10 S runs on devices with ARM or x86 processors, but only supports Windows Store apps. Windows 10 ARM only runs on devices with ARM chips... but supports apps from pretty much any source. Developers don't need to convert their software in any way, because Windows 10 ARM includes a built-in emulation layer that allows Win32 apps to run on an ARM-powered system. But Microsoft demonstrated how you could download a common program like 7zip from the internet and simply install it on a device with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor. Of course, developers can also package software optimized for ARM as Universal Windows Platform apps for distribution in the Windows Store. But they don't necessarily have to.
The Windows 10 nightmare continues. I haven't read one single good news about that damn OS ever since it was released. Prior to it, everyone was saying how it was finally gonna bring back the real Windows, but what we got was pure sadism in software form. And it keeps changing around. It's surreal.
Advances in interoperability, but still a horror show in privacy or autonomy.
Reminds me of MacOS emulation for powerpc/m68k. Sounds good in theory but becomes extremely slow in practice.
This is not just emulating API calls like Wine or containing supervisor mode like most virtualization systems, this is machine language translation on the fly (mame).
Binary translation has always been slow and unreliable, with the sole exception of arcade games in mame.
Now if they were trying to emulate ARM on Intel, that would be much more interesting, especially if Intel got involved and provided microcode to directly run ARM machine code..... can't do that in ARM.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
This is a good thing. Like the 68k->PowerPC, and then the PowerPC->Intel transition - you've got to start somewhere, or you're stuck on one architecture forever.
I see the negativity in many of the posts. I don't understand it. You have to make a start somehow, and this is a good one. If you then allow cross compilation in Visual Studio, then you're essentially taking the same approach Apple did to manage its transitions, and those transitions were damned near seamless. Thanks Microsoft for trying to move and do something different. And yes, I really mean that.
Whatever software emualation is invoked is also going to be WORSE than the PPC to x86 rosetta that Apple had.
...why? Because dynamic translation technology is getting worse in time? Unlike compilers in general? For what reason would that be?
Ezekiel 23:20
I'd imagine it's got to do more with the relative performance difference between the two architectures. x86 emulating PPC worked because the x86's they were shipping were more powerful than the PPC's they replaced. Ditto for the PPC's emulating 68k. x86 emulates ARM without breaking a sweat.
ARM trying to handle the x86 instruction set... yes, it can be done, but whether it can be done well or run enough of the Windows application ecosystem to be worthwhile/marketable is questionable.
Log in or piss off.