Thursday, November 14th 2024
Microsoft Releases Official ISO for Windows 11 on Arm
Microsoft's Windows-on-Arm (WoA) project has been going through an expansion phase, with the recent range of Snapdragon X SoCs powering many laptops. However, as we are about to get bombed with WoA devices in 2025, Microsoft has prepared an official ISO image of the Windows 11 operating system, available for users to download on the official website. The download size is about 5 GB and requires an Arm-based system to work, as expected. The need for Windows 11 ISO image for WoA comes from the increased number of desktop builds shipped to developers worldwide based on Arm. There are many workstations like the ones offered by ODMs, with an Ampere Altra or Altra Max processor inside.
This is also good news for enthusiasts waiting for the NVIDIA-MediaTek collaboration to drop its first goodies next year, and we expect to see some interesting solutions arise. With Microsoft investing its developer resources into producing Windows 11 Arm builds, it signals that the adoption of Arm-based devices is about to get much higher interest from the consumer standpoint.
Sources:
Microsoft #1, Microsoft #2, via VideoCardz
This is also good news for enthusiasts waiting for the NVIDIA-MediaTek collaboration to drop its first goodies next year, and we expect to see some interesting solutions arise. With Microsoft investing its developer resources into producing Windows 11 Arm builds, it signals that the adoption of Arm-based devices is about to get much higher interest from the consumer standpoint.
43 Comments on Microsoft Releases Official ISO for Windows 11 on Arm
It is an important step from Microsoft side though.
Not that it's MS's fault, as it's obviously a consequence of using Arm, but I might as well go for some other OS.
If only ARM chips had the PCIe lanes available to run with a GPU haven't seen that yet. Until then it remains for glorified tablets.
And yes, I know x86 is still alive and kicking ... in a ER from the multiple stabbing wounds it has received from ARM. The kicking is from the pain and the alive is turning into not alive very quickly.
ARM already replaced x86 in Apple products and while Windows has had ARM support for years it wasn't "official" because there wasn't enough compatible hardware and software in the market to make it popular. From 2025 onwards we'll be seeing a big increase in mobile devices dropping x86 in favor of ARM and more software with ARM builds and that trend will continue and once enough software is available the same thing will start happening on desktop devices.
x86 days are numbered [as a mainstream platform, thanks @lexluthermiester ]. I'm not saying it will dissapear completely because it won't, but in 20-30 years it will go from being the main desktop platform to something only companies with legacy software will be using.
Remember how many years it took for some manufacturers to move their device drivers from 32 to 64 bit?
20-30 years? If we're not using silicon anymore, chances are that current CPU types are long gone and we're using something drastically different. Yeah I said chances, I'm not predicting anything lol
Saying that something's "days are numbered" directly implies it will be gone.
RISC will NEVER replace CISC. Ever. Not gonna happen and there are very important reasons for this.
So yup, Darwin Award worthy comment..
However, were straying from topic, so I digress..
Dunno if one can be nominated if alive/not sterilized, I won't bother look it up lol
Anyway, I just don't see the the need for staying on Windows here.
Overy time the functionality of the FPU became so important that it had to be included in the CPU package and continue to be like that until this day. Except, the FPU it's not powerful enough to handle more complext tasks and thats how we got GPUs and then NPUs, where the cost of offloading the operations to an external component offsets by far the cost of doing the proccesing in the CPU. For most tasks you don't need CISCs, especially if you have other hardware with the same/better capabilities.
So go ahead and give me the award. Frankly I don't know if I'll be around in 20 years but in time we'll see if I'm right or wrong.
What hardware Microsoft should use for an R&D phase of Windows on RISC-V?
There are No really good notebooks, laptops and tablets with RISC-V processors at the moment. DC-ROMA RISC-V notebook is a toy to play for a couple of days! RISC-V Single-Board-Computers ( SBCs ) is another example of a hitech-mess related to RISC-V.
As a matter of fact RISC-V ISA fragmentation ( too many extensions released ) is an extremely terrible thing and it creates a lot of problems for software development teams, especially for developers of compilers, like GCC and LLVM. Even mighty Google is having problems with Android on RISC-V project!