Microsoft, Google and Qualcomm Working On Chrome For Windows On ARM (9to5google.com)

Microsoft and Google engineers appear to be working on a Chrome browser running on Windows on ARM. "9to5Google has spotted various commits by Microsoft engineers assisting with the development of Chrome for Windows 10 on ARM," reports The Verge. "The details follow claims by a Qualcomm executive last month that the chip maker was working on an ARM version of Chrome for Windows 10." From the report: A native ARM version of Chrome would make a lot of sense for Qualcomm, Microsoft, and Google. Chrome is one of the most popular desktop apps available on Windows 10, and without a native version for ARM it's difficult to take ARM-powered Windows 10 devices seriously for many. However, it was only last year that Microsoft pulled Google's Chrome installer from the Windows Store, because it violated store policies. Those policies restrict rival browsers to using Microsoft's own Edge rendering engine, specifically that "products that browse the web must use the appropriate HTML and JavaScript engines provided by the Windows Platform." Microsoft also blocked similar browser apps for Windows 8.

Unless Microsoft relaxes its rules then this native Chrome support for Windows on ARM won't be found in the Windows Store. Microsoft and Google's work could still help improve performance for Electron-based apps like Slack and Visual Studio Code which rely on parts of Chromium.

Comments

Firefox

[markdavis]

>"[...]without a native version for ARM it's difficult to take ARM-powered Windows 10 devices seriously for many"

I would think it would be just as [if not more] difficult to take MS-Windows 10 ARM seriously without Firefox. And as far as I am aware, there is none, yet. Let's see just how serious Microsoft is about being "open"...

ABI differs among same-ISA OSes

[tepples]

Memory protection, register use, and other application binary interface (ABI) aspects work differently in different operating systems for the same instruction set. Thus dynamic recompilation engines need to be tuned to each ABI, which in practice means each (instruction set, operating system) pair.

In addition, I suspect that ARM devices are more likely than x86-64 devices to ship in S Mode, which bans all browsers other than Edge and other EdgeHTML wrappers. Though Microsoft has since stopped enforcing a paywall for turning S Mode off, the situation could still prove confusing to users of ARM-powered PCs.

Dynamic recompiler

[tepples]

Why isn't that a case of "feed it to the right (cross) compiler toolchain and done"?

Chromium (and hence Google Chrome) includes a dynamic recompiler for JavaScript and WebAssembly code. If you have a dynamic recompiler that generates x86-64 code, recompiling it for AArch64 will generate a dynamic cross-compiler that still generates x86-64 code, which isn't quite as useful.

Re:Out-of-Store applications

[Kjella]

I thought that was true only of Windows Store, and the big difference between Microsoft's strategies with Windows 10 on ARM and Windows RT (Windows 8 on ARM) was that Microsoft was allowing users to install applications from outside the Store.

Microsoft hasn't quite decided if they want to be Apple or Google yet, they got the store-only S versions and the open versions. Either way they know the "default store" is going to be the big one, just look at where Chrome and Firefox is on Android, everywhere and nowhere respectively. I guess we'll know more in 2020 once Win7 is out of support and Microsoft can finally start to boil the frog properly. In any case I think Windows on ARM is a dud (again), because it's still an odd side dish to a 99% Intel market. Either you transition like Apple did with Macs a couple times or just stick with x86.

I think the next few years are going to be interesting, I got a PS4 Pro to play RDR2 and I have to say... it's pretty good. With keyboard + mouse support kinda there, cross-platform walls crumbling due to Fortnite and another half-gen worth of performance I may not care that much to be part of the PC master race when the PS5/XB2 rolls around. I can't really imagine Apple not putting an A13/A14 chip in their Macs (or even a A12X+), Google keeps chipping away basic users with Chromebooks and for us nerds there's always Linux... I'm eyeing a future where Windows is leaking users in many directions and not really gaining in any.

I mean there was a time they seemed kinda invincible but Windows Phone showed they absolutely could be fought and defeated. I still think they got the corporate desktop locked down good through AD, but they could definitively go in direction of being the next Blackberry. Or rather the next AWS, from what I understand Azure is doing great. On the other hand I wouldn't be the first to claim the Windows desktop will fall any day now, so maybe my crystal ball is defective. But it's gotta hurt that Intel is threading the water and everyone else has caught up...