WinHEC: Windows 10 on ARM-CPUs is coming

Microsoft has announced at WinHEC that Windows 10 on ARM-CPUs will be coming soon. Here is, what we know so far about Microsoft's plans.


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Currently WinHEC conference (Windows Hardware Engineering Community) is held in Shenzhen, China. In a keynote Microsoft announced a partnering with Qualcomm to run Windows 10 on Qualcomm ARM-SoCs.

Windows 10 on ARM
(Source: Microsoft)

The announcement is also made within this article in Microsoft's Blog. Terry Myerson wrote:

Hardware partners will be able to build a range of new Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Windows 10 PCs that run x86 Win32 and universal Windows apps, including Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office and popular Windows games.

As far as I read the announcement, the focus will be on Windows UWP apps, but there is also a mention of x86 Win32 applications. Does it mean, every x86 Windows application (Win32) will be executeable on ARM SoCs (using an x86 emulator)? We doesn't know! Microsoft has published a video to demonstrate the new features.

It is planned, to start with Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 platform to run Windows 10 for ARM with Win32 and UWP apps. But I'm careful, what we will see in 2017. As far as I read within Microsoft's blog post, Windows 10 on ARM is planned for cellular devices, supporting Gigabit LTE and eSIM. Maybe they are planning to release small Tablet PCs with LTE on ARM architecture to compete with Android. But the "Windows 10 footprint" is light years above what Android ROMs needs to run on ARM hardware. Currently I don't see a desktop PC with Windows 10 on ARM.


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