The Second Coming of Windows on ARM (Premium)

Lost amid all the excitement around Windows 11 are some much-needed improvements to Windows on ARM. Is the renaissance finally here?

Well, not quite yet.

We’re still missing one crucial piece of the puzzle, which is, of course, a new generation of Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets for PCs that will finally elevate the performance reality of this platform to the level of the promises. Today’s ARM chipsets---including the Snapdragon lineup and Microsoft’s barely different SQ-series---are not powerful enough. More specifically, they do not meet the promise of “Core i5” levels of performance. Maybe they meant 5th-generation Core i5.

This is something I’ve seen again and again, and most recently when testing modern ARM-based PCs like the Lenovo Flex 5G and the HP Elite Folio (which I’m still currently evaluating). There’s a lot to like about these thin, light, and silent laptops. But performance---and, for now at least, compatibility---issues always undermine the experience.

But with this week’s announcements about ARM64EC and native Office for ARM, things are finally falling into place. All we need is new underlying chipsets. And for the passage of time, because some key compatibility improvements won’t happen until Windows 11 ships this October.

To better understand the problems with this platform, it might be helpful to review the complaints of the past. Since its announcement at a Qualcomm event in late 2016, Windows on ARM (WOA) has been problematic. It’s a 64-bit ARM platform, but to date, it can only run 32-bit Intel/x86-type apps via emulation, and because the chipsets are so slow running Windows to begin with, the emulation experience has been lackluster.

But it’s worse than that. WOA, to date, is also incapable of emulating the more common 64-bit Intel/x86-style apps that most users rely on. And it cannot use Intel/x86-style drivers, which are common and usually include better device functionality. For example, a WOA system will generally connect to and work with most printers, but the custom software that enables advanced settings---edge-to-edge printing, or whatever---is unavailable because it’s tied up in the driver install.

And WOA has other compatibility issues that are a bit harder to describe. Shell extensions, input method editors (IMEs), assistive technologies, cloud storage apps, and other utilities that modify the Windows user interface do not work on the platform (unless they’ve been recompiled for ARM, which few have). And games that require older versions of DirectX won’t work.

In the years since Microsoft announced WOA, it has, of course, released the platform on a handful of PCs and has evolved it with new capabilities, while Qualcomm, its silicon partner, has evolved its chipsets to work better with PC workloads. Things have moved slowly on both sides of the fence, more so with Qualcomm, frankly, but progress has been made.

The biggest change, of course, is the addit...

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