Windows 8 ARM users beware
Microsoft has designed Windows 8 to be the company’s first operating system that will be able to run on X86 (Intel, AMD) architecture, as well as on ARM architecture (Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Nvidia).
However, there is one major difference between the two architectures, X86 will be the only architecture capable of running legacy applications.
This means that applications designed to run on previous versions of Windows like 7 and Vista will not run on Windows 8 if the device is powered by an ARM chip.
“If you’re a professional and you have dedicated utilities, devices … all of that runs completely on an X86 Clover Trail [Intel] machine,” said Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows division at Microsoft.
This comment was backed up by Michael Angiulo, a corporate vice president at Microsoft, who noted that, “Intel Clover Trail [X86-based] can also run all of the desktop software that already exists for Windows PCs. So, on the Intel platform it’s really everything.”
The pair did have some good news for future Windows 8 application developers. “It’s the same app, it’s the same code. So, a developer that writes a Windows app and puts it up in the store can ship to customers of ARM systems as well as on X86 systems using the same code,” Angiulo concluded.
Read the full story at: Cnet.
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