Whoever can make a compatibility layer that successfully translates x86/64 to arm and vice versa and make it widely available will be a major player in the market. Valve has already somewhat done something similar with proton and Apple with Rosetta 2.
Apple developed it as a stopgap. In the Windows world x86/64 will be around for a long long time. Not sure if anyone is willing to support something like that for the next 10 years.
It’s all a question of market share. If (big if) arm gets a foothold into the Windows market, software vendors will simply offer two binaries and/or Microsoft could offer tooling to offer easy porting.
Apple’s real genius move though is not Rosetta, but including x86 compatibility features into the Mx chips. That way the emulation is much faster.
Windows does have a 32/64 bit x86 compatibility layer and most of what I’ve seen through limited bashing around in VS2022 leads me to believe that it has arm as a fairly targetable build target already.
It’s gotta be Microsoft building it into Windows. The Apple Silicon transition wouldn’t have been nearly as smooth if people had to pay for, say, CrossOver or something to use their Intel apps. And the tepid response to the ARM Surface models makes me think that it’s a must, despite the UWP dream.
The good news is that Rosetta 2 shows it can be done extremely well!
I guess it depends on how you define “real processing power”. I run Windows on Arm on my Mac Studio through Parallels. I installed Steam and played Civ 4 and it’s great. Sure, it’s an old game but it runs smoothly.
Whoever can make a compatibility layer that successfully translates x86/64 to arm and vice versa and make it widely available will be a major player in the market. Valve has already somewhat done something similar with proton and Apple with Rosetta 2.
Apple developed it as a stopgap. In the Windows world x86/64 will be around for a long long time. Not sure if anyone is willing to support something like that for the next 10 years.
It’s all a question of market share. If (big if) arm gets a foothold into the Windows market, software vendors will simply offer two binaries and/or Microsoft could offer tooling to offer easy porting.
Apple’s real genius move though is not Rosetta, but including x86 compatibility features into the Mx chips. That way the emulation is much faster.
Windows does have a 32/64 bit x86 compatibility layer and most of what I’ve seen through limited bashing around in VS2022 leads me to believe that it has arm as a fairly targetable build target already.
FEX-Emu is basically that. They’re still in an early state but they showed Sonic Mania running perfectly a few days ago.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Sonic Mania running perfectly
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Someone should revive transmeta and gear it towards arm.
It’s gotta be Microsoft building it into Windows. The Apple Silicon transition wouldn’t have been nearly as smooth if people had to pay for, say, CrossOver or something to use their Intel apps. And the tepid response to the ARM Surface models makes me think that it’s a must, despite the UWP dream.
The good news is that Rosetta 2 shows it can be done extremely well!
Windows on ARM is a thing, it will run x86 binaries.
Gord forbid those binaries want to do any actual work though…
I don’t follow?
Windows on ARM will run x86 binaries. But if these binaries require any real processing power, they choke or run really really slowly.
I guess it depends on how you define “real processing power”. I run Windows on Arm on my Mac Studio through Parallels. I installed Steam and played Civ 4 and it’s great. Sure, it’s an old game but it runs smoothly.