View topic - B8: Windows on ARM (WOA) - Windows, Apple, Application, Abandonware and Game Beta Downloads/Repository

linuxlove · **Post subject:** B8: Windows on ARM (WOA) **Posted:** Fri Feb 10, 2012 4:12 pm

Quote:

One of the notable aspects of Microsoft Windows has been the flexibility the architecture has shown through shifts in technology and expansion of customer usage over time. What started out as an operating system for one person working solo with productivity software is now the foundation of a wide array of hardware and software technologies, a spectrum of connected Windows products, and an incredibly flexible approach to computing. With Windows 8, we have reimagined Windows from the chipset to the experience—and bringing this reimagined Windows to the ARM® processor architecture is a significant part of this innovation. Expanding the view of the PC to cover a much wider range of form factors and designs than some think of today is an important part of these efforts. Windows on ARM enables creativity in PC design that, in combination with newly architected features of the Windows OS, will bring to customers new, no-compromise PCs.

This post is about the technical foundation of what we call, for the purposes of this post, Windows on ARM, or WOA. WOA is a new member of the Windows family, much like Windows Server, Windows Embedded, or Windows Phone. As with those products, WOA builds on the foundation of Windows, has a very high degree of commonality and very significant shared code with Windows 8, and will be developed for, sold, and supported as part of the largest computing ecosystem in the world. Today we’ll focus on the development of WOA and introduce some of the features, along with how customers will experience it. As with x86/64 Windows 8, there are still announcements to be made relative to the business and marketing aspects of the product(s). Today’s blog post is about making WOA, not marketing or selling it.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012 ... cture.aspx

Or the tl;dr version:

Metro apps will run exactly the same across x86/64 and ARM thanks to WinRT
Existing x86 desktop applications will not run on WOA, however you can port your existing application to ARM.
All software (Metro apps, desktop applications, device drivers) for WOA will be obtained through the Windows Store and/or Windows Update
WOA will feature both Metro and the traditional desktop user interface
It's a bit unclear to me, but it sounds like WOA will also ship with "Office 15" included
WOA development systems will be shipped sometime after the Windows 8 Beta arrives
There is no C/C++ cross-compiler to compile ARM applications from an x86 system - they must be compiled for ARM systems on an ARM system.
An early build of WOA was actually a Windows 7 post-RTM, build 7652.

Dean235

Thats good if all the metro apps work on both architectures, there are a few AV vendors that have developed ARM applications and so have some other companies

WinPC

As far as the earlier builds of Windows on ARM, well, the post-RTM development of Windows 7 was what Windows 8 was known as during its earliest stages of development, before entering Milestone 1 stage, so there weren't any real high level feature changes as far as functionality was concerned, but that doesn't mean that they weren't already going through changes to the low level code (such as the drivers), so really, I'm not at all surprised that Windows 8 has had support for the ARM architecture, even as early as the post-RTM Windows 7 builds, before even Milestone 1.

Also, what about 32-bit x86 support? If a Metro app was written for 32-bit x86 systems, would it also run on ARM systems, or is it only x86 64-bit Metro apps that are also able to run on ARM systems?

Finally, how would you port existing applications to the ARM architecture? Is Microsoft talking about developers with the proper knowledge and compilation software, or are they offering an easy way even for average end users to recompile their existing applications?

And what about development systems for Windows on ARM? Are they talking about systems with Windows on ARM preinstalled on them, or are they talking about developer toolkits?

linuxlove

WinPC wrote:

Also, what about 32-bit x86 support? If a Metro app was written for 32-bit x86 systems, would it also run on ARM systems, or is it only x86 64-bit Metro apps that are also able to run on ARM systems?

Metro-style apps will run on Windows 8 regardless of what architecture it is running on, be it IA-32 (x86), AMD64 (x64) or ARM (ARM) thanks to the Windows Runtime (WinRT).

WinPC wrote:

Finally, how would you port existing applications to the ARM architecture? Is Microsoft talking about developers with the proper knowledge and compilation software, or are they offering an easy way even for average end users to recompile their existing applications?

At the very least, I'd assume you'd have to recompile an x86 C/C++ application for ARM using clARM, or the Microsoft C/C++ compiler for ARM platforms. More complex programs (especially those that depend on low-level systems) would require some rewriting to run on the ARM platform. I don't work at Microsoft so I'm only guessing here.

WinPC wrote:

And what about development systems for Windows on ARM? Are they talking about systems with Windows on ARM preinstalled on them, or are they talking about developer toolkits?

Again, just a guess but I'd assume both a development system with WOA preinstalled and a WOA SDK since they did say you need an ARM system to compile native code for WOA.

WinPC

Are there any ARM emulators for x86 systems? It would be interesting to see if they can handle Windows on ARM.

The Distractor

The video includes footage of 6.2.8194.winmain.120107-xxxx
Said build is listed on Canouna's buildlist as a beta escrow build, 6.2.8194.0.winmain.120127-1917

TheCollector1988

WinPC wrote:

Are there any ARM emulators for x86 systems? It would be interesting to see if they can handle Windows on ARM.

I don't think QEMU would do the job of emulating Windows on ARM.

linuxlove

Just for fun, let's take a look at Windows on ARM back in CES 2011:

Dean235

linuxlove wrote:

Just for fun, let's take a look at Windows on ARM back in CES 2011:

Its really good that Microsoft are putting their OS on other devices rather than a laptop than a PC, I dont think Windows 8 will need a thin client or an Embedded os!

hounsell

Look up what Thin Clients and Embedded OSes are before typing such crap.

Dean235

hounsell wrote:

Look up what Thin Clients and Embedded OSes are before typing such crap.

An Embedded OS is basically a stripped down OS

hounsell

Nope.

You'll find Server 2008 Embedded is actually no different to Server 2008.

If you think Thin Clients are the same as Embedded devices, you're even further from the truth.

WinPC

No offence, linuxlove, but I found ABSOLUTELY NO information on that page regarding ARM compatibility with Build 7652 (searching brings up ABSOLUTELY NO results whatsoever).

From what I see, you received your information regarding Build 7652 from elsewhere, and NOT from this particular article. I think you should edit your post to point to the source where you did hear about Build 7652 having ARM compatibility, otherwise, it will just confuse people.

I am not speaking to offend you linuxlove, but I think that people might be confused if you don't provide the additional sources for whatever was not mentioned in the above mentioned article.

EDIT: Possibly, however, it's mentioned in the video, but I'll have to check it myself to be sure, however, it's certainly not mentioned anywhere within the text version.

DeFacto

WinPC wrote:

No offence, linuxlove, but I found ABSOLUTELY NO information on that page regarding ARM compatibility with Build 7652 (searching brings up ABSOLUTELY NO results whatsoever).

I noticed that too...

dans34

WinPC wrote:

No offence, linuxlove, but I found ABSOLUTELY NO information on that page regarding ARM compatibility with Build 7652 (searching brings up ABSOLUTELY NO results whatsoever).

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/02/09/building-windows-for-the-arm-processor-architecture.aspx wrote:

Early in the development of WOA, the only hardware we had were existing ARM devices such as phones (ARM tablets didn’t yet exist). We just thought you would enjoy a few fairly early photos I captured of debug WOA all loaded in RAM (unretouched). Note: This is not a product plan or even a hint at a product.

WinPC

I stand corrected, there was indeed information there about Build 7652's ARM compatibility. However, I still think that linuxlove's post should be updated, since in my opinion, it needs to point to the particular pages where these pieces of information are mentioned, otherwise, it will almost certainly confuse some people.

From what I see, while it was still known as a mere post-RTM update of Windows 7, before even the Microsoft employees really knew where the project was going at the time, the project itself still went through such kernel updates as mentioned above, yet it was not until it entered Milestone 1 stage that it went through any real high level functionality updates (almost certainly with exception to such updates as the newer builds of Internet Explorer, etc...).

However, it's interesting to see that even low level code updates can matter quite a lot when it comes to adding support for new architectures, something that Microsoft was doing with Windows 8 (known then as post-RTM Windows 7) even during the earliest stages of its development.

hounsell

WinPC wrote:

I stand corrected, there was indeed information there about Build 7652's ARM compatibility. However, I still think that linuxlove's post should be updated, since in my opinion, it needs to point to the particular pages where these pieces of information are mentioned, otherwise, it will almost certainly confuse some people.

It's one page, the one he's linked to. What's confusing about that?

WinPC wrote:

Windows 8 (known then as post-RTM Windows 7)

Post-RTM Windows 7 is not Windows 8. It's Windows 7, after RTM, but not a part of the Windows 8 project. Indeed, Post-RTM is often used for things just like this - testing feasibility. No doubt Windows 8 was in the planning stage, and they were simply wondering how Windows on ARM would plan out, so they throw together a post-RTM build to more accurately judge how much resources they'll need to devote to it during Windows 8 development.

WinPC

Actually, if you would look back, it was confirmed by Wzor that during the development of the post-RTM builds, Microsoft was already compiling them knowing that they would become the next version of Windows somehow, but this was still before they really knew where the project was going, but from what I see, they were quite certain that it would become some sort of a later version of Windows, so they first started compiling the actual builds themselves, and then decided later that it would be Windows 8, that is, once they knew what features were popular demand. Somewhat offtopic I know, but I thought I would correct you (no offence, and certainly nothing against you). However, if you look up the information from Wzor about this, you would see what I'm talking about.

Anyway, I don't remember seeing that screenshot on the page, I mean, I might be wrong, but I doubt it. Even if it is on the page though, I think that linuxlove should edit his post to point to that particular screenshot, otherwise, people might be looking for information regarding the specific build, only to be misled. No offence, but I think that it would be easier for other people to see and understand.

longview

WOA is a tablet OS, why is there even still a desktop?

It's stupid, the .1% who want to use mobile workstations with touch will be using high end x86 tablets convertibles so that doesn't make sense (they wouldn't want some low power ARM for a workstation).

They'll be shipping an OS that most of the time is a decent tablet OS, then suddenly dumps you on the Windows desktop full of tiny text and impossible-to-tap little buttons, people will hate it.

E:

Quote:

WOA includes desktop versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Probably why they even included the desktop, why wouldn't they make new Metro editions here? They're trying to promote their new Metro Design Language but the flagship products ignore it completely.

BogdanV

WOA is more than just our current-gen, limited tablet OSes. As its name implies, its Windows on ARM, Windows for a specific architecture, not for a specific product. It was meant from the get-go to be a full fledged OS given all the hard work they went through with the firmware and low level parts of the system.

And anyway, desktop mode has always been in Windows and will remain there, much like the Command Interpreter has survived throughout the ages.
Also, the ability to simply carry a tablet and quickly connect it to a mouse,keyboard and display and start doing serious work is a major advantage in favour of WOA and Desktop mode as opposed to carrying a laptop.

As much as some would like to believe, you can't expect people to do any serious Office-related work on a tablet as-it-is.

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