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Now, seriously, Windows failed once on RISC platforms because software vendors were not interested in supporting them. Can an ARM-based Windows desktop functi
by gpjt 16y ago
Now, seriously, Windows failed once on RISC platforms because software vendors were not interested in supporting them. Can an ARM-based Windows desktop function when the only software it runs is Windows?
I guess a lot depends on how much developers embrace .NET; .NET apps are compiled to CLR bytecode which presumably could run on ARM devices just as easily as on Intel.
- rbanffy 16y ago> CLR bytecode which presumably could run on ARM devices just as easily as on Intel. It's doubtful if performance would not degrade so much as to make desktop software made to run on the x86 .NET runtime unacceptably slow on ARM.
- teyc 16y agoThe most CPU demanding work on a mobile phone is actually the user interface, and on WP7 this is offloaded to hardware. I see no reason why ARM tablets running Windows would be necessarily slower.
- ot 16y agoWindows phone 7 is based on .NET, so they already have an ARM backend for the runtime.
- rbanffy 16y agoHave you tried running Office 2010 on your phone? WinMo 6 has a .NET runtime too.
- ot 16y agoAre you trolling or what? All your posts seem to be based on the assumptions that a) The ARM architecture is intrinsically slower than x86 b) .NET is intrinsically slow c) Microsoft wants the same applications that run on the desktop to run on the mobile Any evidence that backs these assumptions?
- rbanffy 16y ago> a) The ARM architecture is intrinsically slower than x86 Current ARM processors are not designed for speed. I doubt they will be able to outrun x86s in single-thread performance anytime soon. Without faster threads, the machine doesn't feel fast. OTOH, more cores make a machine feel smoother under load, which is very nice. > b) .NET is intrinsically slow This is the Java vs. native discussion. JIT and optimization and native libraries go a long way, but I don't see Office being rewritten in C# to run on the CLR. The last massive rewrite to the CLR was during the development of Longhorn and that part was cancelled, resulting in Vista and, IIRC, a two-year launch delay and the retirement of the project lead. .NET and Java (and Python, which is what I use most of the time) are good enough, but I just don't see a major OS rewrite in that direction until writing portable C/C++ and recompiling for each target becomes impractical. > c) Microsoft wants the same applications that run on the desktop to run on the mobile This is no mobile platform. If it runs "full" Windows, people will want it to run IE with plugin support. At the very least. People will want Office, games and Photoshop. If it doesn't offer an easy migration (data, programs, skills) they may as well go with iPad or Android that were designed to be that way since the beginning. If it doesn't run Windows software, why build the Windows legacy in? Also, on your initial post you made the assumption WP7 is runs on .NET, which is mostly incorrect. Microsoft software shipped in WP7 is moslty (if not all) native. What runs under the CLR is 3rd-party software.
- 16y ago
- barake 16y agoThe CLR is already available on ARM-based devices via Windows Phone 7 (and PPC in the 360). No idea how complete the implementation is, though.
- gpjt 16y agoA lot of stuff is missing; last time I looked, IronPython (Python for .NET) wouldn't run on the restricted mobile CLR due to missing support for various introspection/code compilation APIs.
- maximilianburke 16y ago> I guess a lot depends on how much developers embrace .NET; .NET apps are compiled to CLR bytecode which presumably could run on ARM devices just as easily as on Intel. The only problem I think would be with mixed assemblies, those containing both native and managed code, which can exist for PC applications. XNA games for example run on PowerPC (Xbox 360) and ARM (Zune/WP7) but their development is much more constrained than PC applications.