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Forums - Microsoft Discussion - Windows 10 is coming to Qualcomm's Snapdragon mobile chips

Thats interesting... He mentioned emulation with x86 photoshop so does it mean that you can actually install desktop apps without needing a specific arm version? Cause if that's true then damnnn.



                  

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Mr Puggsly said:
UnderstatedCornHole said:
Bear in mind that all applications still need to be ported to ARM to actually run.

I was jokingly going to say, "MS could make an x86 emulator."

But then I watched the video and they actually did it. So...

lol that will teach me to watch the video in future, that's mighy impressive.



FunFan said:
LurkerJ said:

I doubt you can run Windows 10 on a Qualcomm processor and work on photoshop without fans cooling the device. We don't know what kind of power the Qualcomm processor in this demonstration has either. Fingers crossed for future announcements.

MS must have a viable OS running on ARM processors and that OS can't be Windows Mobile because it crashed and burned. So I think this is their next attempt? 

Or they are simply making Windows 10 compatible with ARM. Wouldn't be the first hardware agnostic OS.

Linux based operating systems (especially Debian) work anywhere you want them to; Debian has a repository of over 40,000 packages of software, that work on almost any CPU on the planet.

https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/installmanual

This link sends you to a list of different CPU architectures that Debian alone officially supports, as well as including a guide on how to install for each.

So yeah, Microsoft better supporting ARM is like you state, no big deal.



Captain_Yuri said:
Thats interesting... He mentioned emulation with x86 photoshop so does it mean that you can actually install desktop apps without needing a specific arm version? Cause if that's true then damnnn.

"Qualcomm also announced at Microsoft MSFT +0.18%’s WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Community) conference in Shenzhen that their next generation processors like the 10nm Snapdragon 835 would be fully compatible with Windows 10. "

The demonstration is done on a SD 820, or at least that's how it's identified on W10, so I am not sure if that's the exact same one used in mobile phones though.



Zkuq said:
UnderstatedCornHole said:
Bear in mind that all applications still need to be ported to ARM to actually run.

UWP applications don't need to be ported, they'll just work, I believe. It's not a huge help but it should help quite a bit.

Win32 applications don't need to be ported either. I wouldn't have bothered with the news if that was the case. 



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LurkerJ said:
Captain_Yuri said:
Thats interesting... He mentioned emulation with x86 photoshop so does it mean that you can actually install desktop apps without needing a specific arm version? Cause if that's true then damnnn.

"Qualcomm also announced at Microsoft MSFT +0.18%’s WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Community) conference in Shenzhen that their next generation processors like the 10nm Snapdragon 835 would be fully compatible with Windows 10. "

The demonstration is done on a SD 820, or at least that's how it's identified on W10, so I am not sure if that's the exact same one used in mobile phones though.

Hmm well the SD 820 is used in almost every single mid-high end android phone so that is pretty great. It is really about the drivers if they managed to run in a SD820 and not specialized hardware if I had to take a guess. I hope Samsung gets on board with their Exynos cpus too cause those are much faster than the snapdragons



                  

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UnderstatedCornHole said:
Bear in mind that all applications still need to be ported to ARM to actually run.

Nah, this awesome new OS will just emulate realtime.



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LurkerJ said:
Zkuq said:
The video description says it comes "complete with x86 Win32 and UWP apps such as Adobe PhotoShop, Microsoft Office and popular Windows 10 games and videos". Does this mean it has x86 emulation, because I'm not sure what else it could mean and that would be huge.

"Traditional Windows apps can only run on X86 chips, not ARM—thus, the failed Windows RT. To get around this, Qualcomm (and only Qualcomm) is working with Microsoft to emulate X86 instructions, the companies said. Microsoft itself crafted the X86 hardware emulator, according to industry sources. The emulator software attempts to minimize any CPU overhead by handling only CPU calls. Instructions sent to any associated storage, I/O, or GPU are all handled natively by those components, the company said. One source said Adobe’s Photoshop, one application Microsoft is expected to show at WinHEC, apparently runs well. "

Wow, that's actually really impressive. Well, I guess it can't be that hard really, but that's a really significant advantage for this. In case you couldn't tell, I don't like watching videos and I didn't even think there could be anything important there this time. :P



LurkerJ said:
Zkuq said:

UWP applications don't need to be ported, they'll just work, I believe. It's not a huge help but it should help quite a bit.

Win32 applications don't need to be ported either. I wouldn't have bothered with the news if that was the case. 

Yeah, I got that impression and you cleared it up for me already. :P I just wanted to point out to him that at least some applications are guaranteed to run, even without emulation.



FunFan said:
LurkerJ said:

I doubt you can run Windows 10 on a Qualcomm processor and work on photoshop without fans cooling the device. We don't know what kind of power the Qualcomm processor in this demonstration has either. Fingers crossed for future announcements.

MS must have a viable OS running on ARM processors and that OS can't be Windows Mobile because it crashed and burned. So I think this is their next attempt? 

Or they are simply making Windows 10 compatible with ARM. Wouldn't be the first hardware agnostic OS.

That's not just what they are doing here. They wouldn't have bothered with making an emulator for Win32 desktop programs if they just wanted their OS to run on more hardware. There is more to it. Windows will be running on ARM devices, fully functional, UWP or Win32, thanks to a partnership with Qualcomm & an MS investment on a jaw-dropping emulator.