Windows 7 on ARM a possibility?
The final release of Windows 7 could see an ARM-compatible build in order to deny Linux a foothold in a growing market.
As reported over on Electronista, Warren East has pointed to ARM support in Windows 7 as a possibility for the future – finally breaking the barrier that ARM's latest processor chips would face to mass adoption.
In comments to press, East stated that Windows 7 would work “on a broader array of hardware than any other release of Windows at launch,” and despite this not including the non-x86 ARM instruction set at first he stated that “perhaps there will be support [for ARM] in future.”
East went on to distance himself from the comments, stating that “that's really for Microsoft to comment on.” The move should come as no surprise, however: with several manufacturers seriously looking at ARM's new Cortex A8 and Cortex A9 chips for their performance at a particularly low power draw – and with no current version of Windows available for the ARM instruction set beyond the simplified Windows CE – Microsoft would be foolish to concede the next generation of netbook devices to rival operating system Linux without a fight.
The move comes as Linux enjoys a boost in usage, largely due to netbook devices, to 1 percent of the Internet-connected PC market. Figures from research organisation MarketShare – via DownloadSquad – show Linux breaking 1 percent of the market for the first time. While the open source operating system has a long way to go before it'll seriously challenge Windows – at 88 percent – or even Mac OS X – at 9.7 percent – the continued growth must be causing Microsoft a certain amount of concern.
Would an ARM build of Windows 7 running on a Cortex A9-based netbook be the king of the ultra-portable world, or is Microsoft barking up the wrong tree with this move? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyIf this is indeed true then great move Microsoft!
These mainly revolve around Compatibility with existing software, and OS Size / Speed. Linux has already been pared down and runs very well indeed on these low power CPUs. I have a build here on my ARM A8 using only a fraction of the resources of any recent Microsoft OS, running very nippily on a system with only a 512Mb flash drive and 256Mb of DDR1 RAM. On the Driver / software compatibility front, the ARM is a totally different architecture to the x86. There will be a lot of hardware interface problems to overcome, which Linux has already had years to sort out. All the Windows API calls will need to interface to a completely new underlying architecture, meaning that they can't be cross compiled, they will surely have to be re-written. When doing this, MS will have to make certain that they maintain the common interface required for program compatibility with the x86 machines. This will essentially give Microsoft another code base to maintain, and even more trouble than they already have performing bug fixes and keeping support across the two very different architectures.
That said, if they pull it off, MS may well get a foothold in the growing ultra portable market. Sadly there seem to be many people who lack the patience to try something different, and would happily take the machine with the MS Windows install on it just because it means they don't need to spend time learning their way around it. Furthermore, if MS did port full Windows 7 to the ARM, they could potentially do away with Windows Mobile; I can imagine that companies that have to make Windows x86 PC compatible utilities to complement their hand held smartphones / similar products may welcome this - code recycling would be much easier if their portable hand held devices ran the same OS as the machines they usually talk to. Ultimately I feel it would come down to OS stability and how steep Microsofts Royalties / installation fees will be for use of "Windows 7 ARM edition", and what, if any limitations MS impose upon the ported version of their OS.
but great news, more reason to study RISC architecture!
Otherwise I think this sound great, but I don't want to see it working but unusable - putting too much of a strain on the limited resources available and bogging everything down.
edit: actually, if my assumptions are correct, which they probably aren't, why would they need two version of Windows? Once they have made one that will run on a reduced instruction set processor, like the relevant ARMs, then will that not work on an x86 CPU too? Or do reduced instruction processors have some different ones to x86?
The more hardware choices the better!
This will in many ways be no different than the current situation with AMD64 (x86_64, x64) apps vs. old x86 code.
OSX is unix :p
Kimbie
This holds far more appeal to me than a desktop version of ARM-based Windows 7. I've long been a fan of Windows Mobile devices (my latest being the Touch Diamond), but it just feels like there's something lacking.
One thing I have noticed is that the centralised application distribution platforms of the iPhone and Google Android have both helped to spread adoption of what is essentially a high-power smartphone. Windows Mobile-based devices have been around for much longer, but haven't had the same level of consumer adoption. With their "cloud computing" projects and Live, it does seem as if they are attempting to moving to a completely seamless service. It's not hard to imagine a world where I can seamlessly move between my mobile phone, desktop PC and netbook, while retaining all my applications, data & services. That's possible now, but by using a more familiar platform for developers, it could make the process a whole hell of a lot easier.
Not to mention the difference it can make to actually using the device itself; Windows Mobile has made great strides over the years, but it's still not quite there. At it's heart, it's still an overhauled version of WinCE. It takes third parties, such as HTC, to make vast improvements on the interface and improve the user experience (see HTC TouchFlo).
I do recall reading a while ago that Microsoft have made progress in overhauling the kernel - now called "MinWin" - of the operating system and reducing it's dependencies; a stripped down version was demonstrated which only consumed a measly 25mb of disk space and 40mb of RAM. It's not hard to imagine that miniature core kernel forming the basis of an ARM-based version. (linkies: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2007/10/core-of-windows-7-taking-shape-meet-the-minwin-kernel.ars , http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=842 and more from google: http://www.google.co.uk/search?rlz=1C1CHNH_en-GBGB326&aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=minwin )
I think we'll see a lot of development and change in both the mobile devices and cloud computing/thin client sectors in the next couple of years.
It won't be the desktop version of Win7 on a mobile device, but the very core of the platform could be the same.
Although instead of philosophising on the future of Windows on ARM, I think for now I'll be content with waiting for Windows Mobile 7 ;)
Even with Linux the x86 and x86-64 instruction sets are different, requiring each package to be compiled for different processors.
I can't see mobile devices coming with enough memory and graphics power to give the users the GUI experience that they will expect from Win 7. Certainly not in the timeframe before Win 8 at least.
Sorry, but I think this just seems to be a red herring to me. Wishful thinking on the part of MS. After all, the license costs for the apps that you want to run will inflate the cost of the device.
Rant over. Run Linux instead :)
Andy