Microsoft launches Windows 10 on ARM
Windows used to run on x86 processors from Intel and AMD but today, Microsoft launched Windows 10 for ARM processors. Microsoft experimented with using ARM based processors when it launched the Surface RT and Windows RT in 2012 and it was costly. The system could only run a small set of applications that have been compiled for the ARM and you couldn't install whatever app you wanted. That was 2012 and today, Microsoft is relaunching Windows for ARM. This time around, you will be aple to run any program. Even though Microsoft isn't releasing an ARM based Surface device, HP has announced a new line of laptops that will.
The benefit of using ARM-based chips is that you get the same user experience that you are used to with smartphones. They feature wsireless LTE connectiviy and mosst importantly, much longer battery life. Asus and HP, which both worked with Microsoft, claim over 20 hours of active use batter life and 30 days of standby. Asus announced their NovaGo line which is powered by the QualComm Snapdragon 835 chip and HP is bringing in the Envy x2 which offers 4G LTE2 support.
Microsoft GM of Windows, Erin Chapple stated that there is no emulation at the operating system level. The team spent alot of time defining the boundaries between the operating system and the emulated layer. In the end, Microsoft decided to natively compile all the DLL ( Windows libraries ) and set the emulation level above that. Everything that is above this needs to be emulated and Microsoft uses a dynamic binary translator to translate x86 code into ARM64 code on the fly. Because of this, most applications should run with near native performance since Microsoft apps tend to call the operating system APIs directly.