By: Doug S (foo.delete@this.bar.bar), June 23, 2020 4:13 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
dmcq (dmcq.delete@this.fano.co.uk) on June 23, 2020 4:00 am wrote:
> It does lead to the queston though of what Microsoft can get out of it. Could they run
> their ARM verison of Windows 10 on a decent machine? Some games could then be run under
> Windows 10 which also can run old x86 programs.Five year old games might run at a reasonable
> speed under that, and that could well be good enough. It doesn't do x64 though.
I think what Microsoft gets out of it is a lot of people starting to use Windows/ARM, which lends credibility to the platform and increases its userbase which makes it more likely developers port which makes it more likely it will get more users. What Microsoft will need to take the next step beyond Apple lending support is hardware to run it that doesn't suck but isn't sold at Appl prices. Maybe Qualcomm will bail them out there.
> And that lads to another quetion, the Macs almost certinly would be doing x64 binary
> translation, was Microsoft only doing x86 translation because it was easier, or to
> encourage more recent programs to convert, or because Intel talked about patents?
Microsoft recently said that Wow64 would be able to handle x64 applications soon. Intel patents wouldn't have affected x64 support, since AMD created that ISA not Intel (and AMD64 patents probably expire this year since AMD64 came out in 2003 and patents had a 17 year term then)
Maybe Microsoft assumed software that was new enough to have been built for 64 bits should be easier to port?
> It does lead to the queston though of what Microsoft can get out of it. Could they run
> their ARM verison of Windows 10 on a decent machine? Some games could then be run under
> Windows 10 which also can run old x86 programs.Five year old games might run at a reasonable
> speed under that, and that could well be good enough. It doesn't do x64 though.
I think what Microsoft gets out of it is a lot of people starting to use Windows/ARM, which lends credibility to the platform and increases its userbase which makes it more likely developers port which makes it more likely it will get more users. What Microsoft will need to take the next step beyond Apple lending support is hardware to run it that doesn't suck but isn't sold at Appl prices. Maybe Qualcomm will bail them out there.
> And that lads to another quetion, the Macs almost certinly would be doing x64 binary
> translation, was Microsoft only doing x86 translation because it was easier, or to
> encourage more recent programs to convert, or because Intel talked about patents?
Microsoft recently said that Wow64 would be able to handle x64 applications soon. Intel patents wouldn't have affected x64 support, since AMD created that ISA not Intel (and AMD64 patents probably expire this year since AMD64 came out in 2003 and patents had a 17 year term then)
Maybe Microsoft assumed software that was new enough to have been built for 64 bits should be easier to port?
